


the invisible exchange

by screamingintune



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Animal Death, Body Image, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Child Abuse, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Eating Disorders, Ents, Fantastic Racism, Fire Lily!AU, Firebending & Firebenders, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Magical Realism, Post-Season/Series 01 AU, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Propaganda, Psychological Trauma, Starvation, Suicidal Thoughts, Zuko (Avatar)-centric, fatphobia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:00:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24627433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/screamingintune/pseuds/screamingintune
Summary: Zuko suddenly realized with bone-deep certainty that he was going to die out here on this spirits-cursed raft in the middle of the ocean.Or... Zuko stops eating on the raft he was on with Uncle Iroh after the failed Invasion of the North, and no one notices because intuitive master firebenders can supplement a carnivorous diet with photosynthesis almost exclusively.
Relationships: Iroh & Zuko (Avatar), The Gaang & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 128
Kudos: 1324
Collections: Best of Avatar: The Last Airbender





	1. shaded space

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MuffinLance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuffinLance/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The One Where Zuko's Hair Matches Sokka's and Other Tales](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21632206) by [MuffinLance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuffinLance/pseuds/MuffinLance). 



> This was based off a prompt offered by @younggayanddoingokay on Tumblr to @muffinlance that was essentially: "What if firebenders could photosynthesize" and "not angsty." Unfortunately, I took one look at that and thought to myself: "That is very angsty actually," partly because I am in recovery from an eating disorder (BN). 
> 
> I tagged this as ED, and I emphasize again that Zuko definitely has an eating disorder and also PTSD. However, he experiences very little health effects from his eating disorder because he's more or less nutritionally stable. Zuko also has (C)PTSD, loosely based of my experiences with both CPTSD and traditional PTSD and is overall Not Having A Good Time. I also put A Lot of thought into what a photosynthesizing magical mammal would look like physiologically, and I joked on Tumblr that I was reinventing Tolkein's ent. This story will deal with starvation, food insecurity, trauma, and disordered eating. Yes, an eating disorder can develop out of food insecurity and starvation, and if you decenter the ED narrative from the white upper middle class thin cis female teenager (as you should), the majority of EDs are tied inalienably to trauma, food insecurity, and stigma (esp. with regards to weight, race, sex, gender, sexuality, class, ability). Restriction is the heart of All Eating Disorders, yes even _that_ one. I am Super Educated about EDs, starvation, mental illness, and the failings of society and healthcare and not gonna argue with people. Zuko's ED has _little_ to do with the shape of his body or his facial features, but generally EDs aren't actually about bodies anyway as they are generally maladaptive coping mechanisms at their core. I tagged fatphobia because Zuko does make comments about Iroh's body, as do minor characters. I don't intend this story to be a Very Special Episode about EDs or fatphobia. 
> 
> The title of the story is taken from "[Carnivorous Plants](https://poets.org/poem/carnivorous-plants)" by Marianne Boruch (2018).
> 
> _"...their bright faded stalks breathing in  
>  my carbon, giving back oxygen, not a gift, only something  
> to remind: the invisible exchange—love that first."  
> _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this chapter ("shaded space") is taken from "[Peace Lilies](https://www.poetryoutloud.org/poem/peace-lilies/)" by Cathy Smith Bowers (2004).
> 
> " _...Scant food  
>  and light. See how I've  
> brought them all together here in  
> this shaded space..._"

Zuko suddenly realized with bone-deep certainty that he was going to die out here on this spirits-cursed raft in the middle of the ocean. The Avatar was so far out of his reach the banished prince might as well be trampled at the bottom of a great ravine with every bone shattered and every blood vessel burst. He was laying on his back, lips cracked and peeling back, staring up at the vulturatrosses circling them, daring them to make a gasp for his eyes. Azula had told him once that vulturatrosses ate the eyes of enemies of the Fire Nation and picked their unburned bodies clean. Only the honorable got proper pyres; the rest would wander the land as ghosts, or so the spirit tales went, and after everything he’d seen— _red moon, no moon, full moon; a glowing two-legged koi fish towering a league tall; a huge three-fingered hand out of the canal; “Take my hand!”_ —Zuko believed in spirit tales. 

He licked his broken lips and followed the path of the vulturatrosses across the sky. Maybe if they got close enough, he could shoot at them? It was an unfairly blue and clear day, with a bite of cold to the breeze. Was it still winter, or had the spring equinox come? He’d lost track of the days again, because they were all the same for so long and he had people for that, besides. Or used to.

“Uncle,” he said, voice guttural and wrecked. He waited a little for a response, but it didn’t come. He groaned a little and forced himself to roll over, while ignoring his viciously bruised ribs protesting underneath his skin through gritted teeth. Uncle was laying on the other side of the raft, shaded under the ripped and overlapping remains of their shirts and jackets. Not even firebenders should stay unshielded in the sun so long. A zing of fear ran down his spine, or maybe it was just sweat. 

“Uncle,” Zuko repeated a little louder. Uncle snored in response. Zuko smacked his forehead on the wood. Not half as satisfying as the reverberation of metal, that was for sure. He dragged his arms underneath him and pushed himself up. Zuko checked the tarp made out of his commandeered waterproof parka for collected water and greedily drank what was there. It was Uncle’s own fault for not being conscious, he told himself. And he’d made Uncle drink the last two times, both after vicious fights that made Zuko feel even worse about everything. 

How long had it been since they’d left that massacre at the North Pole? At least six days? Or seven or eight? It’d been awhile since they’d past the last of the floating bodies. He tried not to think about how the bodies they’d seen in the water were only support staff: engineers and medics and cooks. The rest must have sunk as soon as their ships capsized, under the weight of their armor. _Stop thinking about it_. Metal coffins at the bottom of the icy ocean of the Northern Water Tribe in the middle of winter. _Stop thinking about it_. Zhao pulled his hand back and let that koi beast take him rather than take his dishonorable hand, like he had the pox. Zuko prayed he was dead and not still alive in that spirit’s grap… _I said, ‘Stop thinking about it,’ you complete and utter dishonorbale stupid uneducated failure. Father has never been more right about you._

Zuko’s jaw popped, and he groaned again, digging into his cheek with his fingertips. Uncle kept telling him to stop tensing it all the time. It’d been three or four days since they’d last eaten, the last of the rations Zuko had commandeered disappearing quicker than he thought it would, even though Zuko had parceled each jerky into bites per day from the start. 

He tried to hoist himself up into a proper seiza instead of crawling about the raft surface, but his vision whitened and his ears at once felt cotton-filled and like they’d been blown out by a loud orchestra at a play. He swayed and collapsed back down on his forearms and knees. He rested his forehead on his forearms for a second, breathing hard. He was sick to death of this dizziness. At least he wasn’t nauseous and puking bile anymore with that voracious ache in his stomach. The ache was now body-wide, in every muscle and joint, which somehow made it easier to bear. 

If he and Uncle had had the foresight to drag one of the bodies into the raft with them… He felt another wave of nausea rise, and his mouth salivate threateningly. _No_. Just because the savage Sun Warriors were said to have engaged in ritual cannibalism does not mean it permits them to eat their countrymen even in times of emergency. Their bodies and spirits deserved any paltry respect their dishonored prince could give them. On the other hand, if Zuko and Uncle Iroh both waste away to nothing on this raft, that just adds two more names for the ritual pyre doesn’t it? If Uncle was awake, he’d never allow that kind of disgrace anyway. 

Too late now. 

If he had any sense, he’d stop thinking about the past and worry more about his present. 

He rubbed his forehead against his forearms again and sneered at the wetness. At least he wasn’t so dehydrated he couldn’t sweat anymore. In the beginning they hadn’t even been able to sweat, but Uncle had finagled some sort of evaporation station with their shirts. Uncle had gotten a sunburn a couple days ago, because he’d firmly said, “Prince Zuko, we will need more food and use up more of our stored energy if we keep firebending non-essentially. Energy is stored in fat and muscle, and those are both more essential to life than bending to regulate our temperatures. Warming and cooling ourselves at will are a luxury that we can and _will_ give up for the moment.”

An imperial firebender with a sunburn. That is the latest shame they’d come to. First a prince of the blood physically branded a coward on his face. Now another prince of the blood with a _sunburn_ , as if he was some bastard half-blood colonial with no fire control at all. 

Zuko contemplated his wrists and his vivid blue veins. He’d read a scroll once about one of the earlier avatars—Avatar Huilang of Chenguang Valley in the Earth Kingdom—who as a child had been in a cave-in with her family. Her father had sawed off his leg for them to eat to sustain her and her siblings as they waited for rescue for weeks. He wondered how long it would be before he or Uncle got desperate enough to do something like that. 

He rolled back over to look back at the sky and the vulturatrosses. 

“Come closer, you stupid birds,” he ordered them. They predictably did not listen to him. “You’re as useless as Jee!” he told them after a moment. “You never listen to me! No one ever listens to me.”

His eyes were stinging (because of glaring at the stupid vulturatrosses who wanted to rip the scelera from his face, as if it hadn’t been through enough). He dragged a wrist harshly across his cheeks. He pointedly did not think about how Zhao had conscripted his men—and they may have been huge screw ups and cowards and idiots to end up on his decomissioned rustbucket of a ship, too defiant to follow any orders and too stupid by half to notice a stowaway _in green_ in his brig, but they were _his_ —and then that koi beast had certainly drowned them all. Jee’s always creaking armor had finally been his downfall, that awful man. If he’d kept it oiled, _as was regulation_ , maybe he would have been able to slip out of it and swim out of the polar waters like some of the others had done three months ago at the South Pole, and then… and then what? The scrolls about Water Tribe savages said they didn’t take prisoners of war. Drowned by a spirit or drowned by a waterbender, either way his body would have ended up at the bottom of the sea. 

He understood _why_ Fire Lord Azulon (may his flame burn eternal) had decimated the waterbenders at the South Pole and left them alone enough at the North Pole. The Sages said the next waterbender Avatar was likely a woman of the Southern Water Tribe, given the demographics of the Avatar statues studied at the ruins of the Air Temples. The South Pole was advanced enough to train their women benders to fight to the last and that was why they were aggressively patrolled and eventually culled. The North on the other hand, if they had been “blessed” with the predicted female Avatar would have left her all but untrained, and no Avatar untrained in their first element could _ever_ master the others (based off of the paltry sources on Avatar Loi of the sandbenders who also neglected to train their women for several millennia). The Fire Nation was the most advanced and progressive people in the world in this regard. (So were the airbenders, a vicious voice somewhere inside him reminded him)

“Can I not think about anything bad for _five minutes_?!” Zuko bellowed. Uncle grunted behind him. 

Zuko coughed. More acid was rising up in his throat. This was ridiculous. He fisted the edge of the raft and dragged himself towards the edge in case he needed to spit up nothing. His stomach was probably convinced they were poisoned and that’s why he wasn’t eating, and was determined to rid him of it. Or maybe it was just stupid and doomed like everything else.

He peered at the depths for a bit, but there were still no visible fish, and the last time he’d dove into the water, Uncle had lectured him about wasting his valuable energy keeping himself warm in the polar waters. It wouldn’t matter if he found them a fish in the polar waters anyway, because unless he could catch them with his mouth or hands, he couldn’t exactly punch some fire at it underwater could he? And not even a dragon could boil the sea. 

He tried to look at Uncle out of the corner of his eye, but Zuko had ended up with his scarred side facing him and his peripheral there was shot. He sighed so aggressively the water moved a little at his breath. He jerked back at the ripple and peered around for a shadow. Agni, please let it _not_ be a walking whale. The spirit tales said they were ridiculously big with teeth the length of his entire body. After a moment he breathed out hard in relief.

He turned back on his back and stopped torturing himself with the depths of the unfathomable sea. He ran a hand down his torso and across his increasingly visible abdominal muscles now bulging obscenely through his skin from the lack of food and water. It was bad enough avoiding his face in any reflection for the past two and a half years, but now he had to avoid looking down at his body at all. 

His good eye drifted to the side a little, and he caught the shape of something in the distance. He quickly looked back up at the sky. He resolutely did not stare at the horizon ( _no_ , Uncle, he did _not_ see that ominous woman with the blue and bloated face peering head and shoulders out of the choppy water with menacing eyes, because _he did not look at ghosts_. “All the plays say _not_ to look at them, Uncle _, you uncultured baboon,_ my luck is bad enough without testing it against actual ghosts of the drowned after the greatest military disaster in Fire Nation history!” Zuko had _not_ shrieked at him.) 

Zuko kept looking at the vulturatrosses, waiting for his chance to hunt them back, and resolutely did not think about all the awful things bearing down on his chest like a lead weight. 

* * *

After Lu Ten had died (may his flame burn eternal), it was said Uncle had gone on a spirit quest to try and bring him back. His father had said this was superstitious nonsense and that Uncle was a fat lazy old coot who didn’t have the honor or strength to fight for his country, let alone his son or his destined throne. When Uncle had come back home after six months (Zuko had been alone nearly that long as well), Zuko had asked about it. Uncle had joked and jested and said a bunch of nonsense wise old man things that never made any sense. On Zuko’s ship, when he was thirteen and branded a coward, Zuko had asked again. That time Uncle had talked about chakras and spiritual healing and various jiu-jiu nonsense, or so it had seemed at the time. 

On this raft in the sun, Zuko tried to meditate but his mind kept flittering all over the place (and frankly he’d meditated with candles since he was six, and he didn’t know how to do it any other way, and he wasn’t about to admit he was so stupid he couldn’t figure it out on his own). “The place” his wretched thoughts kept flittering was to was—the metal of his rusty ship bursting in-out; the fire rushing in around him from all sides with the reptile-bird’s caw in his ears; Zhao clenching his jaw and refusing to take his hand; an ampitheater full of unfriendly faces; _red moon, no moon, full moon_ —all the bad things in his life and vicious cravings in the back of his throat for literally everything he had ever had in his mouth ever. His nose was full of the sea salt and foam, but none of the coal smoke of his engine (because his engine of his awful little ship was _gone_. Blown up and then sunk at the North Pole with all the rest of the Fire Navy ships).

That was when Zuko instead started trying to remember his chakras and get in touch with the spirit world. 

It was that or trying to challenge the sea witch ( _she’s not real. She’s not real. Don’t look at her. She’s not real_ ) to a real fight, or check to see if Uncle had fallen into unconsciousness instead of a real sleep or if the unspeakable had happened when Zuko wasn’t paying attention… Better not to focus on those things. 

Zuko couldn’t remember most of the chakras, first of all, and it was better for Uncle to sleep the day away instead of wasting his limited energy on nonsense like pai sho or some ninny fake nonsense like _chakras_. The only one Zuko remembered though—and maybe it came to his mind because of the pain in his belly or because it was the fire chakra, and therefore the superior and only important chakra, or because he hadn’t eaten in four or five or six days because he’d wanted Uncle to have the jerky (“No, Uncle, I ate my half, leave me alone. Eat your dinner.”) because if one of them ought to live, it ought to be Uncle, though he was sure Uncle disagreed. Besides, Uncle was a master firebender, and masters need to eat more, even if they were fat and lazy buffoons like him…

The only chakra he could remember, Zuko thought, looking up at the sun haloed by the three vulturatrosses on this clear and bleak mid-day was the fire chakra in his belly. He slowly arched his neck, dragging the loosened tangle of his ponytail (and the quickly growing stubble they _were not talking about, Uncle, how could you forget to pack a razer anyway?!_ ) under his skull so he could check Uncle was still asleep (Uncle and he were both tired deep in their bones, and Uncle was worryingly too tired to lift the little cup to his lips on his own the last time Zuko had caught him awake; sometimes Zuko felt that fatigue too, when he had gotten too tired to sleep at all) so he didn’t see Zuko engaging with this inferior sissy nonsense ( _If Father could see you now_ …) 

Satisfied with Iroh’s shaded and snoring form and his rising (if slowly flattening and drooping) belly, Zuko shot one last warning glare at the vulturatrosses and closed his eyes. 

He took a deep breath, as deep as he could, and breathed into his stomach as much as he could. He held it for a second and then breathed out, holding back the flames for once. He resolutely did it again and imagined the breath filling him with strength, imagined water filling him with fresh coolness and not salted and bloodied nightmares, imagined earth stable beneath his feet, imagined warmth in his chest and cheeks and limbs, imagined a lightness to his movements, imagined peace and custard tarts and music and turtle duck ponds and the end of a kata perfectly executed… He breathed in again and imagined the air gliding not just into his lungs but into his blood, into his bone, throughout each of his fingers and toes and teeth, and then breathed out, the feeling rushing out. He breathed in again and imagined the air entering him glided from the crown of his head, over his forehead, down his throat, encircling his heart, filling his stomach, over his sacrum behind his genitals and then settling at the base of his spine for a moment before spreading out like a sun glare throughout his whole body.

The stomach chakra, the fire chakra, was the source of willpower and blocked by shame. 

He breathed in again and for a second remembered everything he was afraid of ( _red moon, no moon, full moon; glowing eyes and tattoos in the middle of winds as fast as any typhoon; a man behind a curtain of fire glaring at him_ ), everything he regretted ( _a prayer shawl fluttering behind him; a bison flying out of a storm above a still ship; swords crossed at a twelve year old’s neck; an old woman’s shoulder shaking under his fist; a convent flooded with perfume full of noncombatants_ ) or was ashamed of ( _“Take my hand!”_ ), everything he grieved ( _“Always remember who you are_. _”_ ), everything that had misled him ( _“Dad’s going to kill you. Really, he is_.”) or deluded him ( _“Finding the Avatar is far more important than any individual's safety!”_ ), and let it go. He breathed out and opened his eyes. 

The sun was still there, steady in the sky, like always. 

Zuko clasped his hands over his stomach, breathed in with intent and then out one last time. 

_Blessings to Agni whose flames burn eternal. May he bless us with food, with warmth, with life…_ Fire Lord used to be the term for the Head Fire Sage, according to the scrolls, and Uncle (and Ursa years ago) used to delight in taking him to the temples and the shrines and the festivals. Fire Sage novitiates used to ritually starve themselves, and the spirit tales used to talk so much about food. _Let Agni warm us and fill our bellies and light our hearths. May we be as fire lilies in the fields of the earth…_ He couldn’t remember how the rest of the prayer went; usually they were set to music, and Zuko frustratingly did better at remembering the dramatic monologues set to music than straight speeches. 

Like a song half-remembered and the lyrics half-forgotten, Zuko watched the vulturatrosses circle the sun and repeated brokenly, silently: _Blessings to Agni whose flames burn eternal. May he bless us with food, with warmth…_ until his eyes drifted shut. 

* * *

“Prince Zuko.”

Zuko’s eyes shot open and he punched a fist of fire that Uncle easily cut aside. After a second, Zuko swayed and said, his words all coming out in a rush, “Uncle! Are you alright?”

Blood rushed in Zuko’s ears, and he could feel his heart running fast. Every joint and muscle was primed and tense, aching deep in the fissures of his body, but he felt strangely clearer of head and on less of a hair-trigger than usual.

Uncle smiled congenially, but there was his eyes seemed foggier than usual. “I’m fine, Prince Zuko.”

“Why did you wake me? Is something wrong?” 

Uncle, hunched over in a way Zuko's tutors never allowed him to sit, pointed off the side of the raft. He resolutely did not look yet. Zuko glared at him and said, “This better not be another ghost.”

“One could argue it is a ghost of a sort,” Uncle said in that infuriating sagely-old-man voice that made Zuko want to bash his own head in and, in another life, push Uncle right off the side of the raft. All of Zuko’s tenuous self-restraint went to rooting his stance, _not_ releasing energy-wasting steam from his ears and fists like he _so_ desired, and gingerly looking over the side of the boat. 

At first, Zuko didn’t know what he was looking at. Maybe their raft had drifted into a particularly out of place misshapen rock and Uncle was already too weak to push them off again? 

It was like a giant moo shu pancake, bulbous and white-skinned, and the length of an average Fire Nation soldier (which was _still_ two or three heads taller than him). It was mostly under the surface of the water except for a portion of its hideous face which was in turn slimy-looking and covered with purple and yellow worms and limpets. Zuko, with a wave of nausea and a jolt of his uneven heartbeat, finally recognized the shape of the protuberance at the center of the mass. It was a fin waving at the sky. At either edge of its massive flat shape were dorsal fins, and facing away from the raft was the shape of a giant eye. Otherwise it vaguely resembled a flat fish cut in half because it had no tail to speak of. 

“Sun mola,” Uncle said. “I believed they were extinct.”

“Well, it’s gonna be,” Zuko said after a moment, with a sharp set to his mouth. He slipped into a stance but Uncle rested a light and freezing hand on Zuko’s leg. 

“Prince Zuko. Have patience.”

“Patience?! I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, Uncle, but we’re starving to death. Can you even stand? Could you even stop me, if you wanted to?”

“Yes,” Uncle said, as if that wasn’t a huge bald-faced lie. 

“Prove it!” 

Uncle just looked at him and swept out Zuko’s ankle. Zuko fell into an artless backroll, which would have made him seem a lot more put together than he really was if he had ended up back on his feet like he was supposed to instead of on his aching knees, but the dehydration and dizziness and pain literally everywhere made that nigh impossible. He shot Uncle the most rage-filled face he could muster, which did not phase the dragon-slayer in the slightest. 

“The sun mola,” Uncle said, gesturing with a shaking hand as if he hadn’t taken down Zuko like he was a particularly feral owlkit, “waves its fin at the surface of the water so seabirds feed on its parasites. We will find our trap is already set and baited for me.”

“And what’s to stop it from leaving and getting away while we wait for a bird so stupid to land on a fish next to a raft?”

Uncle sighed, running a hand through his matted beard. “The sun mola is not the most graceful fish. And frankly, the majority of it is inedible. It is mostly cartilage and gristle and survives by being remarkably unpleasant to being eaten even by the least discerning predators of the sea. I have had the mola twice in my life, and both times it was fried and breaded and remarkably jelly-like. I don’t know if it is even possible to eat it any other way.”

Zuko had made a habit of doing the impossible on a frequent basis and was not impressed with this reasoning. Uncle was equally experienced in waiting out Zuko’s wrathful impatience. 

“I will wait six degrees of the sun and then I’m killing it. I don’t care if it’s the last of its kind.”

Uncle just hummed his old-man-nonsense-y wisdom way and sat there. Zuko glared up at the sky. Even the vulturatrosses had abandoned them. 

While they waited, Zuko stewed. After a few tensely silent moments which dragged on and on, Zuko tried to take inventory of his body again. He dragged a hand down his torso again, feeling at his ribs and muscles and trying to judge the visibility of each without torturing himself by looking. After a couple drags of that, he dragged his other hand across his collar-bone. The top dipped, as usual, but he was trying to tell if the entirety of it was visible now. He tore at the edges of his nails, which might have been more brittle than they should be. His heart rate fell more or less stable. He felt somehow clearer-headed than yesterday but only a little. His headache of the past few days had somehow abated, and it was a pleasure he was hedonistically glad of. 

And he felt less urgently anxious, paranoid, and angry than usual which was a strange change of pace, and he was somehow more energetic. He kind of wanted to launch into some katas or fling himself off the boat to swim or do a handstand, like he was a tigerdillo who wanted nothing more than to pace in its carnival cage but couldn’t in the cramped space.

He checked the direction of the raft in relation to the sun with his eyes and with his bending (Uncle didn’t need to know that). He thought they were drifting southeast and that meant colonized areas of the Earth Kingdom. Technically, he wasn’t allowed in the colonies either per his banishment, and he usually kept a wide-enough berth with stolen current-enough maps from various outposts he’d plundered for information and some of Uncle’s and the crew’s favorite homeland wines. _We are not thinking about the crew right now_ , he firmly told himself. 

A snore broke the air. 

Zuko groaned loudly and threw himself up out of his supine position to glare at Uncle’s sleeping (again!) form. He jumped to his feet and recklessly brought down his fists in a lazy kata, blasting the temperate surface of the ocean with the sides of his fisted palms and splashing himself with the blowback of the water. He swore viciously and looked at the mola. It was so huge and unappetizing he wanted to vomit just looking at the parasitoid-rampant white flesh peeking out of the waves, and he really didn’t want to kill and gut the last of any species (like a flash behind his eyes and skin, he felt dao blades crossed at a twelve year old’s throat— _shut up, shut up, shut up_. If Zhao had tested him, he would have done it, too, and that’s the worst part. The knowing he would have. The knowing he was capable of that. _He was supposed to be a grown up_. _He was supposed to be one hundred and twelve and decrepit or demented or disabled and a master of all four elements, not a little boy._ ). 

Zuko wanted to burn something. Since Uncle was sleeping like the lazy old (starving, fatigued, dehydrated, _was his heart okay?_ ) man he was, then Zuko could bend all he wanted. Zuko punched the air away from the mola. He launched into a kick as well, but the shifting of the raft (really quite different from his little ship) threw him off and he landed hard on his side. He groaned again. 

That’s when he heard it, the warbled cry of some blessed edible flying idiot. He watched it out of his wide good eye as it circled and swept low at the sun mola’s side. It circled down and then landed firmly on its flesh. Zuko gingerly sat up and then pulled himself into a stable crouch, like when he listened into conversations from rooftop shingles, and stalked after the sea bird with his eyes, like he was a feral pygmy-puma. He was salivating a bit, and not in the nauseating-going-to-vomit way. He thought he might have forgotten how, and he wanted to laugh and sing and dance, but he smothered that reckless impulse. 

He let the bird slurp another limpet up and then he blasted it. Which was really quite stupid, he realized, moments after the bird’s body and half its feathers were blasted several measures off the mola into the water. He swore again, shot Uncle a dirty look, and dove into the water after it. He grabbed its charred and broken body and shoved half of it into his pants, and before Uncle woke back up, Zuko was back on that ratty raft that might have been his coffin in another life. 

He wanted to shake his fist and scream in triumph at the sky. 

He dropped the dead bird on the surface of the raft. Suddenly the heart-racing euphoria and adrenaline leaked out and he was left hollow and clammy. He had never cooked before. Or hunted or fished or plucked or filleted anything. Not for the first time, he was viciously angry at how unprepared and useless he was. 

He gingerly sat back down on the raft. Should he wake up Uncle? 

If he did, Uncle could probably pluck, cut, and cook the bird. But if he woke up Uncle, Uncle would make Zuko eat at least half if not more, and suddenly Zuko felt quite nauseated again. His eyes dragged over Uncle’s sleeping form. He was an old man, and Zuko wasn’t quite sure how old in that way that young people had a hard time guessing the ages or keeping track of the birthdays of everyone that preceded them. He knew Iroh was a fair bit older than his father, because Azulon hadn’t married or had a legitimate heir until well into his sixties, and Azulon had been a teenager when Sozin had marched on the Air Nation. He knew starvation and dehydration were awful for the heart, and that the heartbeat was the undercurrent of many firebending forms. He knew that extended malnutrition could deform the heart and leave someone more or less permanently damaged. And old men tended to have worse hearts anyway. 

Zuko felt a tinge of horror, and something clamped down on his own heart. Like something had punched into his gut, rended open his ribs and fisted his heart into his throat. He did not want to watch Iroh die, especially if Iroh intended to treat them as if they were equals in body and in status. Maybe. Maybe Zuko could do this one thing for Iroh, who had always been there even when Zuko didn’t want him to be. Maybe Zuko could cook this stupid little bird and force it down Iroh’s throat and say he’d caught two. He was clearly doing better than Uncle. He was clearly handling the starvation better. He could stand and firebend and he didn’t even feel as winded or tired or paranoid anymore. The pain in his muscles and joints was pervasive but manageable. He couldn’t even guess how much worse it was for an old man. 

Zuko stared at the half-charred body of the sea bird and grimaced. He went to work. 

He woke up Uncle after he’d cooked it. Uncle was much better at waking up than Zuko and didn’t even throw sparks at him. Uncle gave him a measured look but Zuko smiled tightly instead. “I caught two,” he said, like he’d practiced with the prone side of the sun mola. The delivery was stilted and stiff, but he doubted Uncle could discern very much as hungry and foggy as he was. “I already had mine and I thought about having yours, but I figured you deserved to partake in the pleasures of your own plan. It worked.”

Uncle stared at the offered bird bits. He licked his lips and the stitch in Zuko’s stomach eased a bit. 

“Come on,” Zuko said impatiently. “Take it.”

“And you ate yours?”

“Yes.”

Uncle looked at him suspiciously. “The bones too?”

“Soaking in salt water to make a broth,” Zuko said. And that was true enough. He’d ripped out most of the bones of the bird while cooking it. “And I deboned your half too. Don’t eat too fast. You’ll throw up.”

Uncle raised a brow but gingerly took the offered bird. It was greasy and darker than Zuko would have liked. He wiped his hands on his pants and went to stare at the side of the sun mola again. Uncle shoved half the cooked bird in his mouth and chewed loudly. Zuko watched him out of the corner of his good eye. Uncle swallowed with a generous moan and shoved another bit in his mouth. Zuko swallowed the spit collected in his mouth but couldn’t make himself look away. He wouldn’t have Uncle pretending to be full and giving him half of the fish anyway. 

Zuko dragged a lazy hand down his torso ago, feeling the ridges of muscle and bone across his side. 

Days passed more or less with that dynamic. Zuko hunted and drank down three quarters of the broth he’d made from the bones and cartilage of what he’d charred and plucked and dismembered, and alternated laying in the sun and meditating or praying on the raft with watching Uncle watch him as he ate and Zuko didn’t. Eventually when Zuko decided to catch the arrow and look down at his body, he was surprised to see his muscles were _less_ visible. Not just because he’d lost some muscle mass from the inability to do as much training as he’d like and from the lack of food that should certainly be affecting his heart rate more, but because with more hydration and salt, his skin was suddenly enough to cover more of it than before. He hadn’t noticed any hair loss, though he thought he heard it’d take longer for malnutrition to affect his hair than just the two weeks he’d not been eating. He _felt_ weaker in his muscles but how much of that was the starvation and how much was it the reduced training?

He tried to not make it obvious he was checking his hair for hair loss and checking his skin and bones for visibility, but sometimes he felt Uncle staring at him. He smiled and waved off and glared and yelled at Uncle for trying to make him eat _Uncle’s_ portions of the food. Zuko just drank the broth and collected water and pretending the sloshy feeling inside of him made him full, and he wasn’t sleeping as much as Uncle still was. He braided his hair so it’d stop getting in the way as much, especially since it was rank from over two weeks without washing, except for the half inch of fluffy hair all over his skull.

They both laid there on the raft, Uncle going in and out of sleep, and Zuko going in and out of his memories.

What could he have done differently? What could he have done to save the Fire Navy? What could he have done if _he_ was leading the Invasion of the North? Maybe he could have led a secret team of assassins into the city following the turtle seals down. They would have needed his breath control and the breath of fire, which was taught to him specifically by Uncle Iroh though. Maybe if he’d led the invasion, he could have had the ships fire not at the walls of the city but… at something else. Maybe if he’d said something else, done something else, Zhao would have taken his hand. Maybe if he’d let the Avatar chatter his ear off about friendship in that forest clearing instead of punching fire at him, he wouldn’t have killed them _all_. Maybe when he’d taken the Avatar from that weirdly warm and green oasis, he could have just drowned him in the waters with those evil magic fish instead of trying to take him through a random blizzard. Maybe his father would accept him with accolades for killing the Avatar.

If he’d slit the Avatar’s throat at Pohuai Stronghold, he could have taken his chances with looking at the Water Tribes for a new magic baby and no one would have died except that stupid kid. Not Jee or Kyo or _Zhao_ the _creep_ ( _“Take my hand!”_ ). That stupid, naïve, bald twelve-year-old _brat_ with his stupid glider-staff who didn’t understand honor or why Zuko needed his father to let him come home or _anything_.

But drowning a catatonic twelve year old was hardly honorable, and not what he was ordered to do, and it was different playing a game of pig-chicken with Zhao the creepy commander who liked to stand too close to Zuko since _he_ was thirteen and holding the World Spirit who was like three feet tall under the water until… It just wasn’t honorable. For either of them. His father might have no qualms about burning a thirteen year old to death, about sending new recruits to the frontlines, but Zuko _did_. He was weak and a coward and he didn’t want to kill a child-shaped spirit no matter how much of a monster it was.

And even though Zuko was taught one thing about the Air Nation, and their army, and their child-stealing ways, and how they could come out of the sky, and cause tornadoes and typhoons, and rip the very breath from their lungs… he knew something else about the Air Nation too from all his travels, like about the nursery at the Eastern Air Temple full of cradles with bones still swaddled. He knew how airbenders who’d escaped the pogrom were reported by the thousands for reward money, culled to the last not just on one fateful day under a comet, but systemically hunted down like ratcentipedes in a maze, betrayed by friends and dragged out of safehouses and executed for their various crimes. Even if they idealized pacifism like the airbenders propaganda said, like that stupid monk seemed to, in the end many of the airbenders had chosen killing over honorable deaths. There were just as many unburned Fire Nation pyres as airbenders bones in some temples, and bodies layered like chaff. Rooms full of outdated armor surrounding singular bodies in orange and yellow robes.

Early in his banishment, when Zuko had discovered this, he had thought it was… He had thought treasonous thoughts, but it was done and it was before his time and it hardly mattered now. Now, having seen the Avatar toss people off his ship, launch himself previously unthought of measurements in the air and then slam people down through walls and floors as if he didn’t know bodies were fragile things, and join with a monster fish that Uncle claimed was the great spirit of the ocean itself to _destroy the entire Fire Navy_ … Zuko hadn’t quite understood before why Fire Lord Sozin (may his flame burn eternal) had hated Avatars so much, had hated the Air Nation so much.

Reckless, feckless idiots.

Zuko’s belly didn’t gnaw at him anymore, and all of his muscles ached.

* * *

One day, he catches Iroh crying softly to himself. He felt wrong-footed and tongue tied.

He laid open palmed on the raft and soaked up the sun and pretended Uncle Iroh, the strongest man he had ever known, was not falling apart because that is what men do. Zuko pretended not to have seen and looked away.

Not for the first time, Zuko wished Uncle had stayed home. Why did he even follow Zuko on this suicide mission? Why did he follow Zuko to the North Pole? Why did he fashion this raft and let them drift to their sure and unsavory deaths? More than that, Zuko wished he’d died in that medical bed, when the infection set into his burn, when the smell of charred flesh and burning hair and the rancid gangrene of his skin was all that filled his nose, when he’d heard through the cotton filling his ear that he might lose that eye, might lose that _ear_ , might lose his ability to balance or bend. Zuko wished Iroh had let the doctor smother him instead of debride his face again and again and again. It was the most horrifically, urgently painful thing he’d ever felt—worse than the burn itself, worse than his mother disappearing, worse than certain starvation and death. If Uncle had let the doctor leave him to die a dishonorable death, the Uncle wouldn’t be starving on this raft.

He felt horribly guilty about any food he put in his mouth, when he knew it was a bite stolen from Iroh’s lips. Iroh, who was dizzy and uncharacteristically soppy and prone to tears and who _shivered_ still, even after Zuko gave him _everything_ , and it made Zuko so angry. Zuko caught himself lashing out with angry words he didn’t even hear until Uncle looked away, hurt and unbearably sad, and Zuko wanted to die.

This is no life. This is _not_ life.

* * *

Zuko realized after a few days, it was good he wasn’t feeling the starvation anymore, that Iroh couldn’t see he wasn’t eating, because he didn’t deserve the food anyway. What was it Father used to say? _If you don’t get it right tonight, you don’t eat tomorrow_. Well, Zuko had really truly cocked it up now.

He drank the broth and smiled tightly at Iroh and pretended sloshiness from the disgusting mix of too salty broth and tepid water that sounded wet inside of him, made him full and was enough.

Maybe it was. He felt at his collarbone, his ribs, his abdominal muscles, and they felt unchanged. No more visible than before. He felt at his upper arm and his thighs and they seemed a little smaller, but firm as ever.

He laid on the raft and felt the sun on his skin and tried to remember the monologue in _Unwanted Gift of Agni_ about Princess Ronoko who said she was like a flower and would never eat again.

Maybe he wouldn’t either, and he ignored the brittleness of his nails, his hair, the cuts from filleting the birds and the fish that still weren’t healing quickly enough, the aches in his muscles that hurt so much he wanted to punch something…

* * *

Somehow, they reached the colonies and one of Uncle’s favorite resorts. This time when Uncle ate, Zuko did not feel jealousy or pride or envy or anger or even disgust. He felt nothing but mildly happy and then overwhelmingly sad. Uncle grinned at him and shoved the bowls across the table at him, saying some variation of “Try this! Oh, this is wonderful! Try this next!”

When Zuko finally brought himself to put something in his mouth, the texture was… indescribably awful. He hated how it felt on his teeth, on his tongue, in his throat. The taste was ashy and overwhelming, a burst of flavor interrupted by a chorus of voices in between his ears about what he deserves and what he doesn’t. He smiled tightly at Uncle and pushed the bowl away and politely coughed up what he was chewing into the napkin. He drank the offered tea, which was its usual brand of awful watery leafiness, and missed laying in the sun. He politely takes the pig-chicken and cuts it up and counts the bites and the chews per bite and resolutely does not think about the taste, or the food waste, or how he’d somehow lost this small pleasure too.

Zuko used to like eating, like he used to like the theater and the festivals and music and swimming. It shouldn’t have felt like a blow to lose this, too, but it was. The texture, the taste, the temperature of everything he tried felt… off. He tried the desserts and secretly gagged while Uncle was gorging himself. He tried a roll and the way it slowly stuck in his esophagus freaked him out enough, he excused himself to go to the latrine outside. He stared up at the stars, already blocked out a bit by the lights of the resort instead of the brightness they held at sea, and bent over and coughed and gagged and spit until he lost most of what he’d eaten.

He stared at what he vomited up, which was gross. He dragged a hand across his mouth and his cheeks and nose. The snot and tears and bile really added to the experience, he thought bitterly. He maybe kept down the pig-chicken and that was it. He figured that would have to do.

The next day was the anniversary. The day after that, Iroh and he were on the run, fugitives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you liked this chapter, you'll love "[One Day of Rain](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14819783)" by WinterSky101 (on AO3).


	2. least flower, least weed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AU of Team Fire's storyline in s02e02 "Cave of Two Lovers," where Zuko makes sure Iroh doesn't drink any mysterious teas and they keep travelling inland.
> 
> Added tags: “Body Image,” “Zuko-Centric”, “Dead Dove Do Not Eat,” “Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence,” “Animal Death,” "Suicidal Thoughts," and “Original Character(s).” Removed tags: “Canon Adjacent.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end notes for chapter specific trigger warnings.
> 
> I should probably specify why I am rejecting photosynthesis-exclusive Zuko. So. Plants don't get everything they need from the sun; they transform sunlight into glucose which is the lifeblood of energy. However, Calories Are Never Everything and Are Never The Most Important Thing About Food. Plants supplement their photosynthesis with nutrients either from the soil, or (if they evolved in environments with Shitty Soil) by being carnivorous plants. Since Zuko cannot get nutrients from The Soil, that makes him... a carnivorous plant. Without food, he's running low on Important Nutrients like nitrogen (n.b. protein for us), magnesium, phosphorous, and potassium. The majority of these Important Nutrients Zuko are missing can be found in: protein-sources like meat, dairy, legumes, and nuts. The rest of the Important Nutrients Zuko is missing can be found in seeds and dark green vegetables. The funny thing about nutritional deficiencies is that most of them make you stop being hungry, and reinforces the cycle of an ED. Not eating enough > not enough nutrients > nutritional deficiencies cause appetite problems > not eating enough. This is why eating disorders are treated overwhelmingly with refeeding FIRST and then the therapy.
> 
> Don’t hate me but I decided Song didn’t have to appear in this story.
> 
> The title of this chapter ("least flower, least weed") is taken from "[The Sundew](http://swinburnearchive.indiana.edu/swinburne/view#docId=swinburne/acs0000001-01-i043.xml;query=;brand=swinburne)" by Algernon Charles Swinburne.
> 
> _“Bow down and worship; more than we  
>  Is the least flower whose life returns,  
> Least weed renascent in the sea.”  
> _

Zuko trusted Uncle deeply. He trusted Uncle with his fire, and he trusted that when Uncle threw fire at his face it wouldn’t burn him. He trusted Uncle to handle the crew (back when they had them) and make sure they didn’t mutiny against him. He trusted Uncle to flirt badly with every vaguely girl-shaped person they came across. He trusted Uncle to smile and jest and weasel people out of their money and time and information over his stupid games and in the strangling grip of scripted tea ceremony. He did _not_ trust Uncle to survive in the wild. 

The past three weeks of Zuko’s life had firmly taught him they didn’t know half what they should about roughing it in the wild, and never has Zuko been so painfully aware of their urban origins. The Fire Nation, or at least the parts Zuko remembered best, was urbanized and industrialized and its noble people far past scraping at the ground for anything vaguely food shaped. They’d both travelled overland before in the Earth Kingdom, but their current circumstances were far different being on the backs of rhino-dragons surrounded by trained soldiers, naval officers, and marines who all carried provisions and had training in plant identification. Iroh may have been able to cobble together something for water collection and condensing fresh water from evaporated salt water, but that was far more basic than inspecting every berry and leaf for poison by shape and smell alone. 

When Iroh grinned at the little forest bushes and speculated that the leaves could either be a rare and wonderful tea plant, or a rare and awful poison, Zuko said flatly, “No.”

“No?”

“Always assume it’s poison.”

Here’s the thing. Before Zuko was banished (as he tried to banish from his mind the amphitheater of unfriendly faces flashing behind his eyes and the skin-slick shame of begging on his knees for his life and crying like a coward in front of the entire court), Zuko outranked Iroh. After his banishment, Zuko still technically outranked Iroh because he was the commander of the ship they were on. Zuko handled the money and the crew pay and the haggling with every spirits-cursed port authority and trader and merchant and whoever was in charge of the borders at any particular moment. Now they were both labelled fugitive traitors to the throne— _how?_ Was Father that angry that capturing the Avatar took so long that it interrupted the Invasion of the North? How could Father have looked at the moon that night go blood red and then disappear and…? What reports even _left_ the North Pole that night, with the entire navy drowned by the _thousands_ by that league-tall koi monster?—and frankly, their status in relation to one another was even less clear than usual. 

Uncle was hardly his regent or his prince or his advisor or his teacher anymore. Iroh was just his uncle, now, and that meant Zuko was just his nephew, and that probably meant Zuko shouldn’t try to be pulling rank neither of them had any more in the middle of a _spirits-cursed Earth Kingdom forest_. 

Regardless, Zuko was hardly going to leave his bumbling uncle in the middle of a hostile foreign forest to _forage_ while he tried to hunt, when it’d never been so clear that both of them were as good as crippled idiots in these woods. And Iroh was hardly letting him out of his sight either. 

Sometimes Zuko felt himself pinned between Iroh’s eyes like something hunted. Iroh kept asking him if he was hungry, if he was alright, if he had been drinking enough, as if Zuko was still dizzy and lightheaded and unstable on his feet. Iroh kept _watching_ him and it made Zuko want to burn the whole forest down and set a curtain of flames between them just to make him look away for a moment. 

Zuko sighed tightly and did a few ‘calming breaths’ before finally saying through gritted teeth, “We best not consume _anything_ we’re unsure of. The last thing we can afford is one of us being… sick.” 

Uncle gave him a searching look that he couldn’t quite parse and finally hummed in agreement. 

* * *

They wandered deeper into the wood. Uncle kept up a lively commentary, musing on their exact location as if it particularly mattered. Zuko kept track of the movement of the sun with his chi like Jee had taught him and knew they were vaguely meandering east-northeast and based on the colony where they landed and the last map Zuko had stolen out of the ruins of Taku two months ago, that meant mountains and former Air Nation territory and the Chenguang Valley and a couple tributaries of the Zise River. He’d heard the Avatar had liberated the Northern Air Temple, at the cost of well over a hundred and twenty soldiers, given all the soldiers per tank, plus the commander’s retinue and counsel. 

What a violent little boy he had personally freed from Zhao’s grasp. It had made so much sense at the time to free him from Zhao’s clutches. If the Avatar was free, that meant Zuko had a chance to regain his honor and his throne. If Zhao was humiliated, that meant he might be demoted and therefore stay out of Zuko’s way. And well, the boy was twelve and Zhao really shouldn’t be around boys that age no matter how well-ranked or well-respected he was. Zhao was hardly a pleasant man and he hardly kept his hands and comments to himself, until the last time, when it really mattered. ( _“Take my hand!_ ”) 

Zuko sneered a little and tried to think with false brightness, at least the liberation of the Northern Air Temple meant no one in the area had received any wanted posters by messenger hawk. 

“Prince Zuko.”

Zuko was well-trained against flinching. 

Uncle had stopped in a ditch, leaning over with his hands braced on his thighs. 

“Are you alright?” Zuko asked. “Is something wrong? Do you need to sit down?” 

“I think we found the tributary,” Iroh finally said, looking back up.

Zuko stiffened. They were counting on finding the tributary for its water and its local population of animals, and following it to a settlement. “What do you mean ‘we found the tributary’?”

Iroh tried to put his hands in his sleeves, but the Earth Kingdom clothes they’d stolen didn’t have the billowy sleeves he was used to. He frowned and gestured at the ground. “What do you see, Prince Zuko?”

“A teaching moment? You’re going to turn this into a teaching moment?!”

“There is always a moment for learning.”

Zuko groaned so loudly his vocal chords warbled to raspiness, and then peered at the ground. It was more flat than not, with a dusty claybed. The boulderous rocks on either side of them that he had taken for a small valley were large, white and, after touching them, were chalky and somewhat tacky to the touch like a peasant soap. Limestone or soapstone. At a distance there were flat rocks with round edges. He jerked around in either direction, as if glaring at the ground would make water show itself, and finally screamed a sailor’s swear so loud that he thought he heard something with wings take flight. In the sound’s direction he shot two fistfuls of fire and then slammed a fireball into the cracked claybed as hard as he could until he was left heaving breath and a bit of stomach acid. 

He spun and swore again and literally spit fire, fisting his hands in his paltry hair. 

After a moment, Iroh said, “Perhaps this is a side effect of the dam blown at Gaipan.”

Even now, his mistakes were being thrown in his face. If he had captured the Avatar earlier… If the day he’d convinced the vile idiot onto his ship he’d chained him himself instead of delegating like Uncle told him to… 

“How is a dam blown south of Makapu affecting us?! We are how far north?! It’s not even the same river!” That was the Guanyu. This was the Zise. 

“Even the smallest and most benign of choices can have catastrophic effects.” 

“Don’t say that to me! Do not say that to me right now.” Despite himself, Zuko felt pricks in his eyes and he absolutely was not having that either, so he spun on his heel again and slammed a burning fist into an exposed tree root. He screamed fire again and punched the root twice more, bare fisted, before Uncle rested a hand on his shoulder. 

“Prince Zuko.”

“Stop saying that, too! I am not a _prince_!” His voice broke at that last word and he felt himself hyperventilating.

“Zuko,” Iroh said after a long measure. “All is not lost. We can surely still follow the remains of the river.”

 _Can we?_ Zuko didn’t say. _How can we go on?_ _There is nothing left_. This dried up husk of a river was just another sign. But Zuko was used to the impossible and this was only the difficult, so he steeled himself and schooled his face and took a deep breath and flexed the broken and bleeding skin of his knuckles and let Iroh lead him forward, step by step. 

At least walking along the dried and increasingly cracked claybed was in the light of the sun instead of shaded by the trees. Maybe it was the paltry food he’d eaten at the resort, but in the woods he had started feeling that nauseousness deep in him again he thought might be the echoes of hunger. 

They made camp (such that it was) when the sun set all too soon. Zuko bitterly hated the north. More than half the islands of the Fire Nation sat on the equator and that meant the sun didn’t set so egregiously early. It was dangerous to travel openly firebending for light, even this close to the colonies. 

He heard Uncle’s stomach gurgle loudly and tried to hide the open disgust from his face. The good thing about essentially not eating for weeks (has it really been weeks?) was that Zuko’s stomach had stopped making those gross distracting sounds, and he’d stopped having to pass waste besides thin water. He should probably be more worried about that, but since his stomach wasn’t bloating or putting him in agony like a blockage would, Zuko decided to take it as the blessing it was. Iroh frowned smally and clutched at his belly. 

Zuko shifted his shoulders, muscles still aching all over and his feet burning—bad word choice—from the blisters swelling up from the constant walking. He undid his shoes and peeled them and the Earth Kingdom hose off his feet. Earth Kingdom shoes were a lot different than proper Fire Nation boots. The ball of his foot was haloed by bulbous skin, and it shifted grossly when he pressed on one end. His heel and toes were equally blistering. 

“Prince Zuko.”

He sneered to himself.

“Please, don’t do that,” Uncle continued with a wince. “You’ll get an infection and it will hurt more.”

“Hurts now.”

“Pain in the body is forgotten once it’s passed. If you drain it improperly, it will only linger.”

“Easy for you to say,” Zuko muttered, but he let go of his foot and finished undressing the other. He laid flat on his back, firmly not enjoying the uneven planes of the ground. He pillowed his head with one hand, and dragged the other down his torso absent-mindedly. 

After a long moment, Iroh said, “When did you last eat?”

Zuko shrugged. “At the resort.” That was true enough.

They left without any provisions and were hardly able to plunder the small Earth Kingdom hamlet they passed through. That must have been two days ago. 

It was easier to concentrate here than on the raft, but it felt surely pointless to track the days now. There was no going-home now, there was no _find-the-Avatar_ , there was no hope of honor and family now. Father never ‘realized how important family was to him.’ There was only reality left, and reality had only been harsh to him. He closed his eyes and faced away from Uncle and the fire, trying to ignore Azula’s cutting voice between his ears. 

The next day, they walked and walked and the sun beat down on them. Zuko tried to ignore Uncle’s slow and sure steps, as if he was trying to walk steadily for fear of falling. He was trying to hard ignore him (and their circumstances and the fact that nothing had _ever_ gone right for him and now _never ever will_. He might as well find a nice Earth Kingdom family and marry right in until the soldiers marched on them and the greatness of the Fire Nation enveloped the world and there was nowhere else to go. There was nowhere to go… _shut up, shut up, shut up_ ) that he all but trampled it before he saw the body. 

Iroh had somehow managed to catch up enough to grab him seconds before his foot came down. He jerked to look at Uncle and then looked down and gasped, reeling backwards and falling hard his unstable footing. 

You’d think Zuko would be used to sudden bodies by now, but he wasn’t.

He was so far in his head he hadn’t even smelt it. He took a small whiff (because he could hardly stop breathing at all), and it… didn’t smell like decomposition or salty sea foam or like painful ice crystals in his nose or burning flesh, which were all the awful smells he was familiar with. It was just musty. He licked his cracked and peeling lips and knelt. 

Uncle mumbled something, maybe a prayer, and Zuko wondered if he should say one too. It felt somewhat inappropriate to offer a Fire Nation prayer for an Earth Kingdom civilian though, because that’s what it surely was. _She_ , he corrected himself belatedly. _She_ had been Earth Kingdom in life, if those things mattered when one’s dead body was withered up and eyeless on the edge of a dried up river bed. 

She was withered and brown, with all visible skin tight and dry and ashy cracked. Her jeogori was a muddied white and silkmoth-eaten at the green edges and sleeves. It was gathered at the waist, as was the style of the northeastern women he’d seen when he was fourteen and investigating decades-old deadends, and, if she’d been alive with a more intact body, it was scandalously open at the chest. Her matching ashy green chima was mud- and blood-stained, and hiked up over a leg that was violently broken at the femur. 

“She must have been in so much pain,” Zuko said hollowly, so softly he thought he’d kept that safely in his mouth until Uncle replied.

Uncle said, “She must have also found the river dry.”

And died alone, in agony, probably screaming for a rescue that never came. 

“Was it an accident?” Zuko finally asked. “Did she fall somewhere?”

“The leg is crushed, so it could have been a fall from a cliff or if she had fragile bones or one of the wasting illnesses, it really could have been anything.”

He sat with that for a moment, staring at what was left of her face. She didn’t have eyes anymore, long since eaten, and there were bug bitten holes along her cheeks and mouth and neck. He finally said, “We have to burn her. She needs a pyre.”

That felt urgently important for some reason. 

He hadn’t realized he’d been interrupting some sage nonsense of Uncle’s until he caught his wide mouth and wider eyes. Zuko realized tensely that he just suggested something particularly impolitic. Only the honorable got proper pyres, and an Earth Kingdom civilian, eyes already devoured by the carrion-eaters, hardly counted. On the other hand, it couldn’t be a surprise to Uncle that he was dishonorable. 

Iroh closed his mouth and shifted a little. He said softly, “She’s Earth Kingdom. Their custom is burying.”

What a frankly disrespectful way to treat a body, Zuko privately thought, but he’d always known the other nations had bizarre customs, regardless of the details. He remembered the lessons about the Air Nation’s sky burials, well enough—leaving the bodies to rot then mashing up the bones into biscuits for more animals to eat? Even _he_ knew that was probably an outright myth about airbenders. 

Zuko made a show of looking around and then said with a resolute set to his jaw, “I don’t see a shovel. And I’m not leaving her to rot.” _Keep rotting_ was more accurate. She must have been left for months, only to be found by a couple of Fire Nation fugitives when she’d needed her own countrymen to care _sooner_. Where was her family? Where was her husband? After a second, Zuko realized belatedly her husband if she had one was probably away fighting in the war. Darkly, he thought, her husband probably didn’t even know she was gone yet. If he hadn’t pushed her off the cliff himself and left her crawling and bleeding for hours for the river already run dry. 

Uncle opened his mouth to say something, but Zuko cut him off. “I’m not asking. I will burn her with or without you, but I don’t know any of the proper prayers or ceremony for someone from the Earth Kingdom.”

After a terse second, Zuko flushed. Iroh probably didn’t know those prayers or ceremony either. Being in touch with the spirits, as fiddly a title as that was, probably didn’t include a primer on the religious practices of _all_ nations, especially when one was once a crown prince and high general of the greatest nation in the world. 

“I think the spirits will forgive a little ingenuity,” Iroh said brightly.

Zuko remembered a three-fingered fin coming out of a canal to take Zhao, and disagreed. Spirits hardly seemed forgiving.

A proper pyre took six hours to burn, but between them, they got it done in three. Zuko didn’t even know the names of the Earth Kingdom’s Great Spirits, let alone the name of this woman, left to die alone in the wilderness on the edge of a dried up river. 

She must have been so thirsty. Zuko could still feel that, he thought bitterly, peeling the dry skin from his lower lip and discarding it in the dirt. 

He watched the embers as Uncle curled up to sleep and contemplated his knife. _Never give up without a fight_. He fingered the embossed edges of the kanji inlaid in the metal. He had fought for so long. He threw himself into his quest, and he’d _found_ the Avatar. They said it wasn’t possible, but he did it. He had travelled the whole world. He’d fought so much and for so long, and so had she, whoever she was, and what did they have to show for it?

He steeled himself and looked up at the moon. It was full and round again, the lesser eye of Agni. He felt himself shiver and told himself it was the cold. He stared hard, telling himself it wouldn’t turn red. It wouldn’t turn red and it wouldn’t disappear and a great spirit wouldn’t emerge from a too-warm, too-green oasis in the North Pole to kill them all. The moon was supposed to be as comforting as the sun, and on his ship, it had been. Once. 

He looked back at his knife, shifting it so the moonlight glinted off its sharp blade. He tested it with his finger. He always kept his blades sharp enough to cut a strand of hair at a glance. A hysterical giggle bubbled in his throat and he suppressed it. He ran his free hand over his downy skull. If he’d known he’d end up cutting the rest of it the day after he’d shaved it, he wouldn’t’ve shaved it in the first place. He ran his hand over it again, trying to gauge its thickness through the unwashedness. Hard to tell. His muscles ached, and now his bones did, too. Every day was pain in every way.

He looked back up at the moon. Uncle said the eerily white-haired princess of the Northern Water Tribe had been blessed by the moon, and when it died, she gave the blessing back. He was perturbed by that story. So much honor in a savage princess, who couldn’t even fight, let alone bend, who in an instant saw that all the good she could ever do with her little, mortal life would pale for the good she would do without it. 

There is honor in life, in the Fire Nation. Sometimes, there was more honor in death. It was frightening and made him feel painfully small that even a savage Water Tribeswoman knew that intimately.

He swallowed and pressed the flat of the knife against his wrist, just to feel the coolness of the metal. Stomach was traditional, if he really meant to reclaim his honor in the last way he could. He closed his eyes, just for a second, lingering on the chill of the steel, and then lifted the blade away and sheathed it. 

He took a deep breath, in through his nose, out through his mouth. Again. Again. 

It smelled like birch-pine. Suddenly he remembered, if one had a sharp blade and patience of mind, they could cut away the dry peeling bark, carve out the cambium, and suck on its innards for nutrients and water. He coughed a little, sniffed a little, and then walked a little deeper into the wood. 

* * *

The prince did not notice Iroh’s eyes tight on him, or the wound-up tenseness of his body preparing to tackle Zuko and yank the blade from his fists. Iroh eased himself up, readying himself to chase after the boy, but he heard a measure of out-of-place music—indecipherable, bass-deep throat-singing and the melodious beat on a wooden-framed walking-whale skinned drum, if he pegged it right—cast a wary glance and warier ear towards the sky. For a second, Iroh saw the face of a teen girl bathed and dressed in white with her hair in the intricate and beaded style of the North, and a hooded man bathed in shadow drumming behind her, and then the mirage dissolved. A sign then. He took a deep breath himself and waited for his wayward nephew’s return

Zuko came back with two arms full of wet and odorous white and yellow strips of inner bark and a blade balanced precariously between his teeth. He shook Iroh's shoulder to wake him from his feigned sleep and unceremoniously dropped three quarters of his wares in his lap. With an arm free, Zuko grabbed the blade and sheathed it again, did a bit of creative wiggling and dropped a bunch of dande-suckle stems from the band of his trousers and insides of his pockets. 

“What is this, Prince Zuko?” _Was this Prince Zuko_ , Iroh wondered a little, at the wide-eyed blank stare Zuko was giving him. 

“Food. Water.” Zuko grabbed a bark strip and put it in his mouth. “Chew thoroughly and then spit out the thready bits. If you feel adventurous, try and dry them over the fire.” He picked up the dande-suckles and said, “Eat the flowers separately. Suck on the stems to get the nectar out and then eat them. Boil the flowers down into a wine or syrup and fry the rest. I’m going to sleep.”

Iroh peered at his nephew. Was this a reward from the spirits for Zuko’s too-big heart? Or had Zuko been holding out on him, like with his sword hobbies? Regardless, a man was entitled to his secrets. Better harmless secrets that Iroh knew about, than harmful ones he didn’t. And better for the boy to eat again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter specific trigger warnings: implicit ableism, fatphobia, and fantastic xenophobia (by Zuko in his commentary); suspicions about Zhao’s creepiness around Zuko; Zuko has blisters on his feet that he touches; off-screen death of minor original characters; Zuko and Iroh encounter a months-dead, half-decayed body that is somewhat described; suspicions of off-screen domestic violence; continued starvation and dehydration; continued unrealized photosynthesis; continued body-checking; there is a brief tense moment where Zuko looks at his dagger and obliquely contemplates suicide esp. via seppuku but he does not attempt it and Iroh was planning to intervene if he did. 
> 
> Dandelions, honey-suckles, and the cambium of birch trees and pine trees are all edible, and that is the extent of my knowledge of foraging, which is about Zuko's extent of the knowledge of foraging. I'm a city person, Zuko is a city person... there's not really a Foraging 101 for city people pre-Google so.... I am not a registered dietitian, but do not live exclusively on cambium or dandelions though.
> 
> The fic rec for this chapter, dealing with cross-cultural funerary practices is: "[Epitaph](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10647297)" by knittedace (on AO3)
> 
> (Thank you all for all the kudos and comments and bookmarks! I have never had a fic be so popular in my life (omg is this what it's like to write for living fandoms?!)! Thank you all so much!)


	3. can even thine eyes be certain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Team Fire continues northeast along the dried up Zise River tributary and being more-in-touch-with-Agni means being more-in-touch-with-spirits. 
> 
> (More interlude than chapter).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See the end notes for chapter specific trigger warnings.
> 
> Pertinent cultural disclaimer: Like the creators of ATLA, I borrow aspects from East Asian and South Asian (and a small amount from Inuit, Tlingit, and Aleut) cultures such as mythological figures, purported attitudes towards ghosts and spirits, and aspects of Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, and various folk religions (esp. Japanese, Korean, and Thai). However, I am a white American in a culturally Christian society. While by trade I am an archaeologist with a strong foundation in anthropology, I am painfully aware I am borrowing aspects from cultures that are not my own (and not my specialty) and I may be misrepresenting, mishandling, misinterpreting, or outright butchering what I am attempting to portray with respect. Please take my portrayal with several grains of salt and forgiveness. Specifically in this chapter, I am borrowing dolmens (mesolithic tomb structures found in Korea, that also convergently developed in France and Britain) and hungry ghosts (i.e. preta).
> 
> The title of this chapter ("can even thine eyes be certain") is taken from "[Eurydice](http://www.telelib.com/authors/S/SwinburneAlgernonCharles/verse/songsbeforesunrise/eurydice.html)" by Algernon Charles Swinburne (which is my all time favorite poem by ACS and one of his least pretentious).
> 
> “ _Orpheus, the night is full of tears and cries,  
>  And hardly for the storm and ruin shed  
> Can even thine eyes be certain of her head  
> Who never passed out of thy spirit’s eyes,  
> But stood and shone before them..._”  
> 

Travelling along the tributary was a much more painful and much quieter version of travelling on his little rustbucket ship. In many ways, it felt aimless and just the wrong side of hopeless. The scenery changed but there was really nothing Zuko hadn’t seen before. The trees were evergreens and the ground was dry, rocky, and sloping. Every now and then he would hear something moving in the underbrush and half-heartedly shoot some fire at it, but Uncle kept telling him that burning the dry leaves of the brushthicket might start a forest fire. Zuko privately wondered if that would be so horrible a thing to do. Travelling through the Hei Bei Forest was much easier now that it was charred branches and ashy stumps, and Zuko didn’t like how Uncle had acted around that weird clearing with the weirder bear statue. 

So much of Zuko’s life in the past three months had been following hot on the trails of the Avatar and his little Water Tribe acolytes. So much of Zuko’s life in the past three _years_ had been investigating every other statue and mural and archaeological site and historical text and half-burned diary scroll and one particularly upsetting swamp… So, when Zuko caught a glimpse of a misshapen boulder balanced precariously at an angle on standing stones like a primitive attempt at a torii on top of the hill beside the river, he veered towards it almost out of habit. 

“Prince Zuko!” Uncle called behind him, but Zuko waved him off. 

He marched up the hill towards it. It was huge, and must have been formed by early earthbenders, and ancient because half of its shape was shrouded in half-dead foliage. It was a boulder atop three standing stones, with two crossed at the top to carry the heavier edge of overslab, and a shorter, stouter slab parallel at the other end. The entrance was unerringly west-east so the sunset and sunrise must pierce right through it at least half the year. The boulder on top must have weighed a couple tons alone. 

He walked under the overhead slab with ease, though most Fire Nation soldiers would have to duck their heads to follow him. If he still had his phoenix tail (oh, he _missed_ his hair, even if that was such a frivolous want), the crest might just barely brush the underside of the slab and drag along its rough clastic surface. It made him seem taller than he was to have his hair tied several _cun_ above his head. It also made him seem taller when he could stand next to Uncle, who was about only as tall as he was wide. 

He peered at the side slabs and dragged a callused thumb across the surface of the south side. He called up a palmful of fire in his other hand. There wasn’t any kanji, because it was that old of a structure and because early earthbenders really had no finesse for it if they weren’t an Avatar. He might see a white scar that might have been a face or perhaps the shape of one of the extinct Earth Kingdom animals, but it was corroded and bisected by sediment in the very lines of rainfall runoff. 

“Prince Zuko, we really shouldn’t—”

“Is it a tomb?” Zuko cut him off. “Or some sort of ancestor shrine?”

“Most likely. If I had to guess. We really shouldn’t be here! We should go!”

Zuko spun around to glare at him and ask him what _exactly_ was heating the coals under his feet to cause that much urgency in his voice, and that’s when he saw it over Uncle’s stout shoulder, between the trees, and framed by the other entrance of the dolmen. 

It was at least six fathoms tall and Zuko could entirely see the shape of it between the trees that it towered over. 

Suddenly Zuko was catapulted to the freezing North, in the Avatar’s sky bison’s saddle and sawing through fishermen's knots under a suddenly, disturbingly moonless sky, hearing the boy say with almost two hundred voices, “ _No, it’s not over._ ” just before he stepped into the oasis and a glowing fish monster emerged up and up and up. 

He shook off the memory and focused on what he saw in front of him right then and now, bracing himself on the southern slab. It was gargantuan. It smelled as fetid and decayed as a three day old fly-eaten corpse that sat in its last bowel expulsion in summer. It had a bloated, distended stomach and was otherwise made of bones visible under sagging, dappled, wan skin. Its face was like a deformed skull, with round, roving eyes without eyelids and it either didn’t have a mouth or its head was too far away for the opening to be seen. He heard a rapid wind, like the gust of a trebuchet flinging its cargo or like the Avatar inhaling deeply so he could literally blow Zuko’s men into steel and earthen walls, and realized it must be the _whatever-unholy-beast_ gasping and sucking in air.

Uncle jostled his shoulder and tried to yank him through the other side of the dolmen, and Zuko let him drag him out of the structure, but the _what-cursed-and-wretched-thing_ didn’t disappear, it stayed lingering over the heads of the trees sucking in nothing like a sucking chest wound and roving its sparse-haired and deformed head over the trees. Zuko closed his eyes tight and then opened them again, and it was _still there_ and Zuko heard it walking, each step so loud it ought to have shaken the ground and disturbed all the critters and creatures in the wood, but it didn’t. 

Uncle’s hand tight around his forearm did not let up, and they ran together back to the riverside and then kept running, even when they were both gasping and heaving and Zuko felt the stabbing, burning pain in his sides and found himself ultimately bent over spitting up the acid-burning bile and stringy half-digested dandelion stems, curdled flower petals, and the tough fibers of the cambion and half a squirrel-keet’s clutch of eggs that he’d hunted from a nest too low to the ground. He swore at the mess and breathed hard as he braced himself against his knees. 

Uncle rubbed his back for a second and finally said, “I know you wanted to look at that structure but I fe—”

“What was that thing?!” Zuko shouted raspily, voice still wrecked and wracked with heaving. 

Uncle’s rubbing hand stuttered and stilled on his back. 

Zuko, still breathing hard, reeled upwards and pointed vaguely behind them, shrieked, “ _What_ _was that thing?!_ ” 

Uncle took a deep breath and eyed him seriously. After half a tense second, Zuko nearly self-combusted, but the general finally asked, “What did you see, Prince Zuko? What exactly did you see?”

“What do you mean ‘what did I see?’” Zuko screamed so loudly, his voice cracked. He gestured violently behind them. “It was like six _bu_ tall! It had bulbous eyes and _hardly any mouth_! _WHAT DO YOU MEA_ —”

“You saw it.” His voice was quiet, terse, and his eyes and mouth were still wide and every wrinkle and line was tensed on his face.

Zuko clutched his own temples between his palms and knelt on the ground. He strangled out, “What was that?”

Uncle knelt next to him, in a proper seiza, hands braced against his knees. “That was a hungry ghost.”

Zuko blinked so fast that he almost saw white lights dotting his vision. He took a deep breath. Another. “A hungry ghost,” he repeated tightly.

Uncle nodded. 

“Like in the stories.”

“Like in the stories,” Iroh echoed. 

Zuko waited a second for the punchline. It didn’t come. Zuko slowly shook his head. “No. I—No! No, not ‘like in the stories.’”

“Pri—”

“ _No_. You’re lying. You’re—You’re playing with me. This is a joke! You’re joking.” Uncle reached out a hand but Zuko jerked away from it. Zuko launched to his feet, still shaking his head. He declared, “You’re crazy. You. You’re crazy, and you _infected_ me with your _crazy_ and your _lies_ and your _hullabaloo_ —”

Uncle just said softly, “Prince Zuko.”

Like a scruffed feral owlkit, everything bled out of Zuko and he swayed on his feet, mouth still half-open. He turned his head, roving his eyes over the treetops and the dried up river and the rolling hills and mountain. Zuko fell to his knees again, hard. It hurt but pain could be grounding to a point. His heart pounded and his pulse rushed and the blood rushing in his ears sounded as thick and deafening as a crashing tsunami. He thought he might be dying, his heart finally catching up with him, tight and hard in his chest, like a weighted stone. He dragged both of his fists over his hair and missed being able to knot his hands in it. He decided to dig his fingernails into his scalp into the tight flesh of his scalp and keened like a dying thing. 

He pressed his face into the wool blend of his pilfered trousers, and whined louder. He took a deep breath, sucking the cheap fabric into his mouth and then biting hard on what he could of it, and whined even louder. He clutched at his chest, digging his fingernails into the skin of his sternum, as if he could punch through his own chest and regulate his heartbeat by hand. His face was uncomfortably hot and his hands clammy and shaky. His lungs burned and everything ached and his traitorous jaw ground and popped loudly and painfully under the skin of his face..

He took another few breaths and then hoisted himself back up. He pulled his legs out from under him and crossed them lotus-style. He took another deep breath and did _not_ look at Uncle. Unfortunately there was nothing really safe left to look at when the trees harbored breathing spirit-tales, and the river was still dry and cracked and empty and the sun was inching out of the sky which meant the cursed and wretched moon would soon take its place. 

He swallowed the spit gathered in his mouth, steeled himself, and bit out, “If that was a hungry ghost, that—Living people aren’t supposed to see them. The realms are separate.”

“We’re not dead,” Uncle said immediately, as if that was something sensible people said to each other.

Zuko waved a hand. _Oh do continue, Uncle,_ he didn’t say. _I’d love to hear your infectious delusions and mania_. 

Honestly, which would make more sense? He hadn’t really eaten in the past month and in the past three days they had subsisted off of bark and flowers and nest eggs. Who could live three and a half weeks off mostly broth and water and tea? Not a living person, certainly. They both died on that raft. No. They both died at the hand of that koi-monster with the rest of the Fire Nation Navy, and that evil, awful driftwood was how someone drifted from the earthen realm to the spirit realm. 

“We’re not in the spirit realm,” Uncle said. 

“Oh really?” Zuko spit out.

“You cannot see the faces of the living in the spirit realm. Only mirages, and they couldn’t speak to you. How would we have met with Princess Azula if we were dead?”

Zuko regarded him suspiciously.

"One cannot bend in the Spirit World," Uncle said.

That sounded even more like a lie.

Uncle spread his hands like a flower and cocked his head with a wry smile. “When else could we have died? It’s too soon to have died after seeing her, especially now that we have the inner bark and the foraged plants to sustain us. We did not die at the North Pole. We did not die at sea. We did not die at her hand. And we are surely alive, together, right here.”

Zuko screwed his mouth and gestured in the general direction of the hungry ghost. He couldn’t make the words come out. They caught like burs on his tongue.

“What happened on that raft?” Iroh asked him, with violent gentleness. 

Zuko’s hackles raised up and he shrugged. There wasn’t a way to say: _I thought we were going to die. I thought I was going to watch you die. I thought I would cut off my own arm and leg for us. I thought I ought to do everyone a favor and roll off the raft and let the ocean take me. I thought I saw the eyes of the vengeful dead ready to drag us both to the bottom. If either of us ought to live, to eat, to flourish, it should have been you and I thought I finally got us both killed, and I can’t live with having gotten you killed. I haven’t eaten in weeks. I don’t want to eat now. Almost everything I’ve put in my mouth except some eggs and meat and dande-suckles, I’d hardly been able to keep down, and that doesn’t upset me as much as it should. Bringing up food is easier than I thought it would be, and sometimes after I throw up, I feel better than before I’d eaten altogether. I want to die and I think maybe I already have and that’s not as awful a thought as it probably should be._

There wasn’t a way to say any of that, not for him, probably not for anyone, so Zuko didn’t. He didn’t have honor, but he did have pride, and that was all he had most days. 

Iroh pursed his lips and took out some of the cambium from his pockets. He held it out until Zuko took it in his grubby fingers and then he took out a piece for himself. Iroh chewed thoughtfully on it.

“When my son died,” Uncle began, eyes on the rays of the sun painting the clouds pink and purple, “I fell apart. It’s not right for a man to outlive his son. It was bad enough I outlived his mother, and all of our other children.”

Zuko’s eyes widened. He hadn’t realized there were others.

Iroh cast him a glance out of the corner of his eye. “I married Tiān when I was eighteen. My father, Fire Lord Azulon, may his flame burn eternal,” he said the epithet wryly (which was so impolite; Zuko was half-scandalized) and kept going quickly, “thought we were much too young. He married my mother, Ilah, when he was sixty-five. Tiān was like sunlight on the water’s waves. I loved her so much and would not wait for her to go through the Trials to Wife that most future Fire Ladies or Consorts of the Flame,” he shot a peculiar glance at Zuko, as if that was supposed to have some deeper meaning, but with most of Uncle’s deeper meanings, Zuko could not parse it and dismissed it, “have to pass for a proper marriage. Maybe that was why it was easy for the Fire Sages to pass me by at my father’s death.”

Zuko stilled and pointedly said nothing. 

“Tiān and I wanted children so much. This was even before your father was born!” Iroh shot Zuko a smile that he didn’t return. “Perhaps if she had gone through the Trials to Wife, maybe we would have known sooner that… any pregnancy of ours would be difficult. Regardless, we loved each other, and we tried many times to have a healthy baby. Usually, they were often lost in the womb,” Uncle looked down at his hands on his knees. “That was hard on us, but especially on Tiān, and not just because it was hard on her body. She thought it might have been because of her. I don’t know. I never tried with anyone else. Worse was when she would bring the babe to term, or as close as we could, and the midwives and the sages would look at the babe and say that it would not survive. Too small. Or,” Uncle paused, weighing his words. He shook his head. “Or they were deformed. No arms, once. Once, the baby's heart was on the outside. We prayed. We tried to travel so Tiān could have different water and different food.

“Ozai was born by then, and he was healthy with a strong flame. Maybe that's why I was not as good a brother to him as I could have been. Maybe I was angry with my father for having another prince of the blood. Maybe I was just angry he could have other children at all. Maybe I was just angry.

“When I was forty-seven, Tiān got pregnant for the last time. We were both certain it would kill her, and I… begged the spirits to take the babe quickly. To let it die in the womb.” Iroh wiped his eyes.

Zuko looked away. He wanted to say something cruel. He wanted to change the subject. He wanted to kick dirt in his face and he wanted to scream. Why was he telling him this? What purpose would it serve?

“I don’t know if that’s what did it,” Uncle said grimly. “Asking the spirits to take the baby, so I could keep my wife. Maybe the spirits were so unhappy with our bloodline, with my selfishness or my actions, with my father’s actions, and my grandfather’s actions, that they were spiteful. The babe came to term, and he was a boy, and he was whole, and the sages and the midwives said he would live and he would carry the flame, and then Tiān died in childbed. I prayed and prayed for the spirits to exchange our places. I pledged any measure of service if they’d just bring her back, but they didn’t hear me. But I had Lu Ten, and I loved him fiercely, and when you were born, I had _you_ , and I love you fiercely—”

Zuko reddened.

“—and then Lu Ten was eighteen and off to war. He was too honorable to stay in the commander’s tent where I placed him. He wanted to fight alongside his men,” Iroh’s voice broke a little and took a breath. “They fought to the end, and then they were gone. Buried outside the walls of the Impenetrable City. But I knew more than when I had lost Tiān and all of our other children. I did _everything_ I could to see him again. I travelled. I went to sages of every nation, those imprisoned, those not. I made ties with many people in many places, looking for something. I met a guru who taught me about the spirits and the spirit realm, more than the stories, and he said there was a way to visit, but there was not always a way to come back. I figured that was worth the risk. When I did it, when I entered the spirit realm, I searched and searched. Time there moves differently than time in our realm. I felt like I was there years.”

Iroh fell into silence, and the sun finally disappeared completely below the horizon.

“Did you find him?”

“No,” he said softly. “I thought that might be a sign he was actually alive, as a prisoner of war. When I began feeling like I had made a mistake to come to the Spirit World at all, when I thought I was surely trapped, and Lu Ten was trapped in Ba Sing Se, being surely tortured, with no one knowing he was alive, I saw Tiān. She came to me, as beautiful as the day I married her, and she told me Lu Ten had already been reincarnated and that she loved me and that, well, all kinds of things. And she told me that I needed to go _back_ , because my work wasn’t done and someone still needed me.”

Iroh looked at him. Zuko stiffened. 

“And when I woke up, back in my body, I realized I could still see the spirits when their realm just crossed into ours. Spirits and ghosts and _kami_ on planes just barely visible to my eyes. The benign, the malevolent, the neutral, the ignorant. I didn’t have to do anything to keep seeing them, and the first few weeks I was back, I wished bitterly I could stop seeing them.” Iroh turned to Zuko and pinned him in his gaze, “So I ask again, what happened on that raft? Whatever it is, I of all people will surely understand.”

Zuko just shook his head. The cambium was still in his hands, and he had twisted it into knots. 

Iroh sighed and his face shuttered. 

“So it’s not going to go away,” Zuko finally said. “Seeing… _them_.”

“It hasn’t for me. Usually, it doesn’t affect me. It’s background music, like in a play.” Iroh’s eyes widened and chuckled, “Sometimes it’s literally background music like in a play. Music that is slow and beautiful when it’s safe. Music that is eerie when something is a bit strange. Music that is fast and loudens, like rising tension before the climax on stage. That’s what happened for me with that stone structure. I started hearing the music and then I felt like we were being watched and then I grabbed you and ran. Usually, spirits don’t notice humans. Usually they can’t see us anymore than we can see them. Hungry ghosts though sometimes have a taste for human flesh or blood, and with us sniffing around an enshrined tomb, I couldn't take the risk with you.”

Zuko shifted uncomfortably and didn’t say anything else. He forced his tongue still. He had a thousand questions, chief among them what exactly was wrong with him because it was surely unnatural to stop eating but also not waste away, but he felt overexposed. Iroh had shared aspects of that story before, and Zuko had never listened too deeply, and now he was left somehow bare and agonized like a peeled blister. He dragged a hand along his side and his collar-bone and his sternum.

Iroh watched him do that and they sat in silence. 

Zuko took a deep breath, finally calm enough to do that fully, and said, "Tomorrow, we keep walking. No where else to go, anyway." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter specific trigger warnings: Zuko sees a ghost and sincerely believes for a moment that he is going insane, and is verbally ableist about it; Zuko briefly disparages Iroh's height/waist measurements; Zuko calls things "primitive" because he is a problematic colonialist; Zuko has another flashback to the North Pole and a brief panic attack; Iroh recalls his wife's and son's death as well as multiple miscarriages and stillbirths, including infants and fetuses with birth defects incompatible with life; Zuko thinks about telling Iroh about his eating difficulties but doesn't, and recalls starving, purging, and suicidal ideation. 
> 
> This chapter was supposed to go very differently and have a very different plot, but I got so excited! As a result, it's shorter than it should be (3.5k instead of 5 to 7k), because the next chapter has the Real Plot I Planned and Outlined and I didn't want to throw too much angst and information at the page. You'll get what you should have got today on... ~~Sunday-ish or Monday-ish, hopefully.~~ I am moving across state lines though, so I will be a bit more delayed.
> 
> If you liked Iroh in this chapter, you'll love the Iroh in "[stained in tea-colors](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10886304)" by sangi (on AO3). 
> 
> (also! thank you for all the kudos and bookmarks and comments! I sincerely appreciate it!)


	4. grown of gentle days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter, Team Fire continues northeast along the dried up Zise River tributary until they seek sanctuary at an Earth Kingdom temple in Chenguang Valley. 
> 
> (Alternate chapter summary: _Without Song, how does Zuko start his character arc and become disillusioned with the war effort?_ I’m glad you asked!) 
> 
> Added tags: “Implied/Reference Rape/Non-Con” (applies to supporting and off-screen original characters). Removed tags: All character tags that are encompassed by Gaang. (Might add back. This ended up _way_ more Zuko-Centric than I planned.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See the end for chapter specific trigger warnings. (I am NOT kidding).
> 
> Apologies for the delay! Moving Was A Bitch, one of my abusers is back in contact with me and stressing me right out, and a person in tenuous recovery from an ED probably shouldn't write about someone with an active ED while dealing with All The Stressers Just All The Stressers. Thank you for your comments, kudos (700+!!!), bookmarks, and well-wishes! 
> 
> The temple Team Fire stay at this ~~episode~~ chapter is plagiarized from the "Earth Kingdom Avatar Temple" (a la ATLA wiki) in a valley shown at ~17:25 (on US Netflix) of ATLA s1e03, with a mural at ~17:27, with an Earth Kingdom man in lotus position before it at ~17:30 who was there to notice the eyes of all five depicted EK avatars started glowing when Aang entered the Avatar State after finding Gyatso’s remains. I have executively decided that man before the mural is named Jizi. Eun is not in the show, but she was the first (ever?!) OC I have invented for a fic (as opposed to my irl original fiction) and *Joey Batey voice* immediately I loved her. 
> 
> The title of this chapter ("grown of gentle days") is taken from "[The Sundew](http://swinburnearchive.indiana.edu/swinburne/view#docId=swinburne/acs0000001-01-i043.xml;query=;brand=swinburne)" by Algernon Charles Swinburne.
> 
> “ _My sundew, grown of gentle days  
>  In these green miles the spring begun  
> Thy growth ere April had half done…_”  
> 

They crested yet another hill when they saw it.

It was a circular building on a high platform jutting out of the side of one of the mountains, like a conular attempt at a Sun Warrior temple pyramid. The roof was green and topped with a series of geometrical structures in turn: the hexagonal second roof emblemed with the alchemical sign of the Earth Kingdom in gold and brass; then a brass cube; then a lead sphere, and then tat the very top was a golden plummet. The walls of the temple were bracketed by bronzy-red false colonnades and accented by Earth Kingdom green. The frontispiece had an arched doorway and was roofed in a red and gold upturned-artichoke-leaf design. The base of the frontispiece met the apex of what may be the largest staircase on the entire continent if not the world.

“Beishan Temple of Chenguang Valley,” Uncle said, as if Zuko might have forgotten sneaking in two years ago to inspect their mural of the last five Earth Kingdom Avatars. This was hardly the first time Uncle and he had walked around in green.

“Will they give us sanctuary?”

“Not if they recognize us.”

What was that supposed to mean? Zuko frowned to himself. _From before?_ He doubted anyone remembered an old man and his young nephew dressed as tourists alongside their equally disguised entourage. _From wanted posters?_ Had they had time to distribute them outside of the colonies to every temple and town on the continent? On the other hand, Zuko didn’t have the most forgettable face.

“So what’s our angle?” Zuko asked. “If not sanctuary. Religious pilgrimage? Tourism again? …Spiritual guidance?” Iroh shot him a look, but Zuko bouldered right over whatever he would’ve said, “I mean shouldn’t they have an appeasement or something for that thing?” Zuko made a vague gesture behind them.

Iroh ran a hand through his beard. “Our festival for the hungry ghosts this year will start the 12th day of Sun-Dog-Ram Month.”

Zuko twisted up his lips like he bit on a citrine. Sages lived by their own calendar, and his tutors never taught him anything other than the standard calendar that was used for history, laws, and military command. Sometimes Zuko wished he had spent less time focused on what his father wanted him to learn and more on what was important to know, but he stamped out those treasonous thoughts whenever he caught them.

He couldn’t stop himself. “When is that?”

After a strained second that almost ended with Zuko jumping off the mountainside out of sheer embarrassed shame, Iroh said, “A month and a half after the summer solstice.”

“So we’re just supposed to let that thing wander around in the woods on the hope that it isn’t a maneater for another four, five _months_?!”

“No, Prince Zuko.”

Zuko breathed out tightly. Every time Uncle said that, it was like a vice around his chest. He was not a prince anymore. He hadn’t been in the line of succession officially for a while, but he’d had so much faith—and wasn’t that a turn of phrase, now that faith seemed like it might actually matter in more than the abstract—that he’d accomplish his mission and be welcomed back. Or at least that the Fire Sages would delay crowning his sister long enough for an Agni Kai, that he truly believed he had a chance of winning after all of his training, until she flung lightning _and_ blue fire at him.

“They should do something _now_ ,” Zuko said firmly. “It’s their duty. They’re honor-bound to do something.”

“And why would they believe us?”

His immediate response was, _We’ll make them!_ But why would some primitive priests listen to some random refugees who wandered up to the temple? Zuko suppressed a groan and they kept walking, less aimlessly than before.

* * *

Zuko’s plans, Uncle often lamented, were not so much as _thought-out-strategies_ but _random opening moves_ that happened to work out more often than not. Lifting an Earth Kingdom theater mask after seeing a troupe performance ended up a long standing relationship as a ninja-spy-thief. Taking a sheathed set of dual dao from a former naval officer’s bunk after Uncle _handled_ him for failed mutiny turned into a useful hobby he justified to himself as practice for facing an Avatar who dual wielded weapons like Avatar Kyoshi’s metal war fans or Avatar Tizoku’s daisho. Watching turtle-seals dive under water at the North Pole and not come back where they dove down, had turned into a one-man invasion plan.

So Zuko found himself scaffolding barehanded up the mountainside and then squirrel-ferreting himself through the upper windows of the temple, because he figured there had to be an easier way up than a few thousand stairs. It wasn’t any easier than usual, so he was probably still about the same size in body that he was when he broke into—well, he’s broken into a lot of places over the years. Maybe that’s a habit he needed to break as much as his sticky fingers, explosive anger, throwing breakable things, and the whole not-eating thing. He had a lot of vices, but at least he didn’t wear them in the open like Iroh did.

He breathed out a long, controlled breath, and rolled down to the tiled floor. He took another deep breath, rooted himself, and stood. He carefully looked around.

On this floor there was a series of prison-cell sized dormitories with cots nestled into the nook next to each door and a rickety set of bare tables and chairs, all with unlit lanterns and small windows. Zuko stepped gingerly throughout the building, but one positive about Earth Kingdom architecture was the floors tended to be tiled with ceramics and thus easy to sneak about on. He doubted any of the rooms had rations, the latest maps, or handy how-to-deal-with-spirits-being-real-and-also-able-to-see-them-all-the-time-now-so-you-should-probably-appease-them-before-they-eat-you-because-they-can-do-that-too-apparently guides for beginners.

What Zuko remembered from the festivals at home were the smoke pots, the incense, and the sake goblets and barbecued offal plates that his mother smacked his hand away from once when he was really little.

 _If I was an Earth Kingdom peasant, where would I hide my smoke pots?_ Zuko mused to himself. Wait, did the Earth Kingdom even have tobaccannibas? They probably imported it from the Fire Nation for their own festivals, right? He needed to find their storeroom, their granary, or their sill.

Unfortunately, he didn’t get that far. He took a wrong step and suddenly the ceramic cracked under his feet and then twisted up, catching his ankle and sinking it down into the floor. He snarled and went to launch into a kata before he caught himself, so he ended up letting himself crash forward artlessly, hard on his palms. The ceramic cracked and twisted around his wrists as well.

He shot a savage glare at his attacker, who cried, “You would dare trespass on hallowed ground?”

He was in a beige-lined olive kimono, with a forest green overcoat lined with a deeper green. He had equally olive skin, with round cheeks and rounder grey-flecked brown eyes. He had no beard and if he had hair it was hidden under one of those two-story Earth Kingdom hats, like a modified hennin, decorated with a yellow block perpendicular to two parallel yellow lines. His eyebrows were also a greyish-brown color and his face was twisted up in scandalized annoyance.

Zuko’s brow quirked in disbelief. “Yes.” _Obviously_ . He yanked uselessly at his bound limbs, bracing himself with his one free foot.

The middle aged priest growled, and Zuko sunk marginally deeper. “I have half a mind to sink you right through the ground and let the spirits deal with you.”

No one has ever said Zuko has had any sense, so he said, “Might as well toss me outside then, because you practically have a hungry ghost on your doorstep. What exactly are you doing about that?”

“A trespasser and a liar, too.” The man scoffed and mocked in a nasally high-pitched, overly lisped voice, “You expect me to believe someone like _you_ is spirits-blessed?” He scoffed again.

 _Zuko_ had half a mind to bellow some fire at him. What on earth was that supposed to mean? ‘Someone like you.’ Someone could hardly peg Zuko for the dishonored (ex-)prince of the Fire Nation unless they took a good long look in his eyes, and people tended to stop looking him in the face as soon as they could.

“Jizi,” a breathy high-pitched voice said from down the hall, “I found a trespasser—Oh, you did too.”

Zuko could hardly look over his shoulder with an enemy bender right in front of him. Her steps sounded feather-light, but her voice seemed a little deep even for a child.

“You found my nephew!” Uncle said. “I was looking for him, you see. He tends to get a bit lost when no one is keeping track of him.”

“Uncle!”

“We really mean no disrespect entering your humble temple.”

Zuko wanted to smack his head against the ceramic floor.

“ _Humble?!_ “ the earthbender, Jizi, cried.

Uncle said, “Did I say ‘humble’? I meant, magnificent! Really, quite highly placed… in my heart. My nephew and I are but humble refugees seeking sanctuary and spiritual guidance. We have been to at least half of the temples in all of the Earth Kingdoms and were passing through when we recalled this wonderful one and all of its beautiful mural and fresco work—”

Zuko rolled his eyes. He cut him off, “If you want to see whether I’m a liar, you should go down that dried up tributary and see if the hungry ghost eats you where you stand—Did you just _throw a pebble at me_ ?!”

“Hush!” Jizi said, squaring his stance a little.

“There is a hungry ghost nearby?” the woman asked.

“No,” Jizi declared while Zuko and Uncle chorused, “Yes!”

“Jizi, it’s worth investigating the report, isn’t it?”

Gross. Cajolement. Zuko remembered enough vacations at Embers Island ending with broken pots and ripped up paintings and charred upholstery and his mother cajoling his father through her withheld tears. That’s _exactly_ what he wants to think about with his hands and left foot trapped in cracked ceramic and clay between two Earth Kingdomers of the temple he just broke into. He breathed in deeply and held his breath and chi in each of his limbs, ready to crack open the earth bonds trapping him and put an end to this farce himself.

Suddenly the clay released him and the ceramic pulled itself properly back together, and he was left sagging forward on the temple floor. While he was caught up in his banked emotions and memories, the priest and priestess must have decided not to suffocate him in the dirt.

He stood up and his eyesight blew up with black and white spots. He blinked a few times and held his stance so he didn’t tumble over in a dead faint. He licked his dry lips, rubbed the bruised spot where that priest threw a pebble at him, and glared at Jizi, who returned his glare threefold.

The woman stepped into Zuko’s field of view, having been in his scarside’s shoddy peripheral for who knows how long, and he was immediately struck by her appearance.

Maybe if Zuko had not cremated a thinly-skinned skeleton not three days ago, he would not have been so stricken, because that is exactly what she looked like. 

Her face was gaunt, like a mummified skull. Her eyes were dark grey and round in the way that meant, a hundred and fifty years ago, her parents would have hidden her inside until she was five, lest the Air Nomads steal her away. Her eyes were as round as the hungry ghost’s, as if the skin and muscle of her eyelids and eyesockets had wasted away nigh entirely. Her collarbones and cheekbones and brow bone were entirely visible, and high on her chest, such that it was, was a visible sternum, with the edges of her ribs arching out like the legs of an insect under the tight ripple of her brown skin. Her form was mostly shrouded by her clothing, but her wrists and hands were knobby, thin and whorled like gnarled tree roots.

She was wearing a thin light green yukata, her waist was padded out with an obi gathered under her minute bust. She was wearing a brown hennin that entirely covered her hair, like her compatriot, and her ears and her jaw and her throat were covered by a white linen wimple, like a primitive attempt at modesty. Her robe was way too open at the neck if she was trying to be modest, in Zuko’s opinion, and she probably should also be wearing a fichu and _ohhh_ if her chest was down here that meant—She quirked a dark brown brow at him and he turned bright red.

Before he could say something angrily about what was the point of wearing a modesty panel over her ears, jaw, and neck, if she left her flat chest out like that; how dare she!, Uncle says something he doesn’t quite hear over the blood rushing through his ears and before he knew it, the woman (and her age was really quite unidentifiable due to the base starvation she was clearly suffering) had sequestered them in an empty canteen area and served them broth and hardtack and rice wine and tea and rice and turnip-chestnuts and a small yam finger and a greasy lean bit of meat.

She sat across from them, hands on her cup of olive-green tea and watched Uncle shovel the rice and the meat and the yam and the broth-softened hardtack into his mouth. Zuko licked his lips and watched her stare at Uncle, eyes blinking slow and breath slower and pupils blown wide.

He recognized a camaraderie in her.

He sipped and swallowed the broth, peering at the breadth of her long fingers like sinewy strips of cambium and the frailness of her wrists. He could close his hands around them and still touch his fingers to his palm. He felt three parts disgust, one part a sick sort of lust, and one part a molasses thick jealousy stewing dark in him. He shifted uncomfortably, and peeled strips from the meat, piecemeal skinny shreds like hand pulled chicken-pork. He could hardly taste the meat over the collected saliva in his mouth. He felt nauseous and wanted to throw up. He wiped the grease on his pants, and looked up to catch her peering at him underneath her lashes.

He swallowed hard, and mashed the yam more than he put it in his mouth.

Uncle smiled happily and said, “Have you already eaten, priestess?”

Zuko shot back the rice wine. He wanted to scream _Why ask her that? Haven’t you looked at her? They clearly have food, that priest clearly eats, and she clearly doesn’t. She’s just going to lie._

“Just Eun, please,” she said, half-smile tight and fixed on her face. “Yes, I already ate today.”

Uncle raised his brows, fingers entwined in his lap. “Generally, we tend to eat multiple times a day. Is it different in this province?”

Eun shifted and sipped her tea demurely. Zuko fluffed his rice with his chopsticks.

Uncle clapped his hands. “I’m going to go find the latrine.”

Zuko hated long silences. He always felt long silences were dangerous things, especially for him.

“My uncle and I passed through a convent a few months ago that made perfume. Does this temple make or grow anything?”

Eun smiled more genuinely and said, “Tiles are a big export. Our glazes are really quite popular. We also have a distillery and make most of the shaoxing and mirrin traded throughout the Earth Kingdoms. We used to grow more, but after the invasion almost two years ago, we lost most of the other priests and priestesses, and there haven’t been any new novitiates since the integrity of the temple was breached.”

“Invasion? This is a temple. Why would a temple be invaded?” _This was hardly an Air Temple_. 

“Why does the Fire Nation do anything?” Jizi said, across the room. “To spread terror and destruction everywhere they go. That is exactly what fire even is. I’m sure you of all people would know that.”

“Me of all people?”

“It’s in your blood, isn’t it, little white face?”

Zuko dropped his bowl of rice on the table with a rattling clatter. “What is _that_ supposed to mean?!”

“I think we all are aware of the dangers of catering to every egg in the nest, lest one be a cowbird’s.”

“Jizi!” Eun said, aghast.

He cursed the day poetry ever got popular. Instead Zuko so elegantly said, “Go roll a tortoise egg!”

“Nephew!” Uncle called from the doorway, arriving at just the worst time to see Zuko seemingly insult their host without reason. “Apologize! We are relying on the kindness of these fine people of this hallowed ground.”

Zuko sputtered out, “ _Apologize?!_ “ while Eun quickly said, “I apologize on behalf of my compatriot! As we know, the spirits do not distinguish between blood, birth, or status, and all are welcome to sanctuary and community and kindness, as _say our oaths_ , Jizi!”

Zuko scoffed and marched off.

* * *

Eun had set them up in an open dormer with two straw-stuffed cots and apologized again for her superior’s behavior. Uncle made half-flirting, half-joking conversation with Eun and asked what would be done to appease the hungry ghost in the wood, but Eun deflected his flirtations uneasily and stilted in the explanation about the ghost. Finally, she left, and the two sat in tense silence.

“Why do you _do_ that?!” Zuko blew up eventually.

“Do what, P—”

“Don’t be stupid! Why do you take their sides?! They aren’t going to do anything about that stupid thing because they don’t believe us! We might as well take some rations and take our chances out there, before they decide to sacrifice us or something!”

“I highly doubt they practice human sacrifice.”

“And don’t condescend to me! That stupid priest—UGH!” Zuko groaned loudly and flung himself backwards on the saggy and lumpy cot.

“We might as well recuperate here for a few days. Get our bearings straight. This will pass. Let us focus on the good of being here instead of all the bad. The willow does not weep for rain and wormites, but rejoice, and so too do all the saplings it shelters.”

“And no one has any time for your stupid proverbs! Can’t you just speak clearly?!”

“Did you finish your dinner?”

“' _Did you finish your dinner?’_ “ Zuko mimicked in a nasally voice. “Yes, I finished my dinner! I’m saying we ought to go before they receive word who we are! And can you believe them? Soldiers, invading a temple? Before the Avatar returned? As if!”

“I don’t think that’s necessarily as rare as you think—”

Zuko scoffed. “Why would a battalion be wasted on scaling a mountain to invade a temple? They aren’t even holding the temple or any land around it! And some temple! There’s, like, two people here!”

“There are many reasons for an invasion, nephew,” Uncle began, sighing. “Especially if a commander heard about the gold effigies.”

“The ugly little statues?” Zuko said, derisively. “You could hardly tell they were Avatar idols. The faces were all—” he made a vague gesture encompassing the sheer disproportionate hideousness of the idols, many with huge heads, huger noses, and hugest genitalia.

“Not for the fact they were statues of Avatars, nephew. For the gold itself.”

Zuko was outright shocked and a little offended _Uncle_ could think soldiers would loot and pillage a temple. Sure, it was some dinky Earth Kingdom temple, but… On the other hand, if said commander was Zhao or any men like him, then he should hardly be surprised to hear they would be harassing civilians. It was dishonorable, and shameful, but sometimes that didn’t seem to matter to some commanders.

* * *

Jizi made it clear that while Zuko and Iroh stayed with them, they would earn their keep. Zuko tried not to be as openly offended about it as he was. He could hardly expect Earth Kingdomers to give him and his uncle everything they were entitled to by birth. They weren’t (ex-)princes of any of the Earth Kingdoms, were they? And until ~~Father~~ the Fire Lord conquered the Earth Kingdom, they were only enemy combatants turned refugee-fugitives hiding in a foreign land, as Uncle said, reliant on the kindness and generosity of strangers.

In _Zuko_ ’s opinion, humility was not that far from shame or cowardice.

He held onto the mop handle like it might catch him if he fainted. For some reason, being inside made him dizzier and more fatigued and achy than starving in the sun, which was frustratingly counterintuitive.

Unfortunately the mop seemed to just move the dirt around, and he wasn’t entirely sure how much water was supposed to be affecting the grout of the tiles… More unfortunately, that fat and lazy priest Jizi kept him and his uncle separated and kept peeking in on Zuko to pick at him. At least he kept to the end of the hallway instead of looming over Zuko’s back and breathing on his neck like Zhao had.

Zuko overhead Jizi get outrageously offended by some suggestions of Uncle’s, something about smoke pots and incense sticks being carcinogenic _Fire Nation nonsense_. He didn’t know adults besides his father derided things as “nonsense.” He thought it was a unique linguistic turn of his father’s.

Eun peered in on him, face hidden behind a handful of scrolls, and Zuko caught her glances easily. He carefully avoided staring at the way the shadows of the lanterns emphasized her rawboned sternum and anterior ribs.

She cocked her head at the racket a few halls over and then crossed her eyes with her tongue out. He tentatively smiled back at her as he mentally corrected her age as something closer to his. The gauntness of her face made her seem closer to his mother’s age than to his. She smiled. Her teeth were yellowed and nubby. His eyes widened, perhaps uncouthly so, because she immediately closed her lips over her teeth. He tried to choke out an apology, but she had already bustled away.

Zuko groaned lightly and scrubbed the tiles a little harder.

“Hey, little white face.”

He rolled his eyes and turned towards Jizi.

Jizi took a look at the floor and shot a disgusted look at him. “Ease up on the tiles. They’re _antiques_. First your people destroy our artifacts and our relics, and now you want to finish the job with our floors? Ungrateful rotten egg, you are.”

“Jizi!” Eun immediately cried from the other mouth of the hallway. “Leave him alone! He’s just a bit of a beetle off the ground, give him a second to adjust.”

“And _he’s_ got a dick like a turtle in a shell,” Zuko muttered under his breath.

Jizi shot him a look and kicked over his bucket of dirty water so it soaked the floor and his shoes, hose, and trousers. “Oops.”

Zuko was about a quarter second from breaking the mop over his knee and running the priest through but Eun grabbed his arm, vicelike, and said, “I’ll take him outside and show him the labyrinth.”

Zuko let himself be led out, trying to ignore Jizi’s muffled complaints about pale faces and mixed yellow eyed freaks.

He didn’t know what he expected, but he wasn’t expecting to be brought to a circular garden—and he pointedly ignored the memories of another circular garden with a pond in the center—with a series of round rocks lining cobbled pebbled lanes that seemed like they winded in mirrored pathways.

“Do you know how to meditate?” Eun asked.

He shifted uncomfortably. “I could use the refresher.”

She smiled, closed-mouthed. “Here, we do a walking meditation, along the path, in sequence. You keep your eyes open and use the experience of walking as your focal point, and firmly sync your mind and your body and your chi as you walk the path of the labyrinth, matching each step to each breath. With each step, you feel the earth beneath your feet, and stabilize yourself. Firmness. Strength. Stability. Faith. Order.”

She situated Zuko at one entrance, and herself at the mirroring one, across the circle. He tried to ignore the chill of her freezing hands on his.

The sunlight was already making the dizziness and headache he had developed dissipate and he felt the heat return to his hands and face. The ache in his hands and muscles eased again, like a laxing unknotted rope, and he felt somehow clearer already. Still, he had to constantly stop his eyes from lingering on the visibility of the bones of her face, neck, and wrists. Her arms, torso, and legs were shrouded by her dress, and he stiffened his hand so he didn’t rub his fingers down his ribs as he was wont to do.

She took a step and he mirrored her. She narrated how to pull a breath and feel the ground at the same time. “… and if you’re a bender, you can use the walking meditation to practice katas instead of steps. I’m not a bender, of course, but—”

“I’m not a bender,” Zuko lied, wide-eyed, and avoided her face, as he stepped around the path. “Not me, nope.”

She huffed and it might have been a chuckle, but since he couldn’t see her, who knows what it was.

“Yesterday, I saw you didn’t finish dinner—” she began.

“You didn’t eat at all, nor did you this morning!” he was quick to counteraccuse.

“—and I was wondering if you were like me.”

“Like you?”

They turned at their mirrored junctions in tune, like a very strange, long-distanced dance, and were facing each other again. Zuko flushed a little.

She gestured to nothing and said, “The spirits and gods sustain me.”

 _Do they?_ he stopped himself from blurting out doubtfully. He took a breath, centered himself, rooted himself in the ground in a way that, like Eun said, wasn’t that different from rooting himself in a kata, and said instead, “Do you… lose your food, too?” He didn’t know a better way to ask about the nausea that pressed on him after every other meal.

“Sometimes. When I can’t resist temptation and eat too much.”

 _Temptation_. Zuko turned over the word in his head. He didn’t feel that temptation, though. Not as such. Not unless he stood inside too long. He felt nausea when he didn’t eat, and nausea when he did. No sum game. “Do… the _gods…_ not want you to eat? Do you not like food?”

“I was called to a higher purpose,” Eun said easily. Maybe it actually was easy for the pair of them. Zuko was hardly suffering over it (" _Suffering will be your_ _teacher"_ ). He missed liking food, but he’d already lost much in his life. What was one more loss?

They twisted again, back to back, and bodies’ lengths apart. It was easier when he didn’t have to look at her.

“I used to like food,” he confessed quietly. “I just don’t anymore. I can manage meat mostly. Some dark vegetables sometimes. Everything else…”

She hummed noncommittally.

He shrugged, red-faced.

Days passed like that, in uneasy and untrustworthy peace. Breakfast, nausea, fatigue, aches, Jizi snipping at him and making comments about his parentage that Zuko didn’t know how to handle or approach, lunch, walking meditation with Eun, dinner, Iroh and him looking through the files the temple had about spirits, appeasements, and “spirits-touched” figures.

Eventually he felt antsy. He kind of wanted to throw fire, do handstands, fling himself off a wall, scale a mountain. He hated when he got like that. He may have been hot-headed, agitated, and mean on a good day, but when he felt like he was coming right out of his skin, everything felt like a haretrigger.

He had a strange sort of camaraderie with Eun, like a sick sort of siblingship infused with lust, jealousy, and pain. They both had eating… oddities, and it was _weird_ to share a meal, or not, with someone in the know, and somewhat in the same boat. It was even weirder when they took meals together while Iroh was off inspecting the frescoes of the past Avatars, because sometimes Zuko could eat and sometimes he felt strangled at the throat, like Eun might stop ~~being his friend~~ believing him if he ate food. And it was outright disturbing how small and frail she was next to him, who stayed everchanging fit and broad at the shoulder and muscled at the shoulders and whose abs peeked through his skin but didn’t jut out grotesquely anymore, and whose ribs generally stayed hidden under his flesh.

In their conversations, Eun talked about the war, and the Fire Nation army, and Zuko had to bite his tongue at all of the random ideas she had about the soldiers. He had no idea how Earth Kingdom propaganda made its way up the mountain to her ears, but he couldn’t exactly correct her misinterpretations about the army’s actions without outing himself and killing his uncle and himself outright.

During one walking meditation, Zuko complained about Jizi’s insults to his parentage and appearance, dismissing it easily until:

“Oh, you’re not—? Forgive me. I assumed you were a war child.”

“A war child,” Zuko repeated tenuously.

She side-eyed him. “You do have that look about you.”

 _That look_.

He flushed. She thought… She thought his _father_ was… He shifted uncomfortably onto the next stepping stone of the labyrinthine path. He swallowed roughly and didn’t know what to say.

“There’s no shame in it,” Eun said, voice measured and soft. “No matter what people like Jizi think. Sons should not bear the sins of their fathers, and the accident of blood does not make a family or a heritage. Just because someone’s father was… cruel does not mean their mother was… weak or deserved it or anything.”

“I know there’s no shame in it,” he finally said, unable to bear looking at her.

“Nothing a person does gives someone else the permission to hurt them in such a way.” She shook her head. “Absolutely nothing. Not clothing, not inebriation, not culture, not _war_.”

He shifted to the next stone and breathed raggedly. She mirrored him on the other side of the circle.

“Please, look at me,” Eun said. He did. “Nothing you did—or could ever do—deserved that scar. I know when it happened, it must have felt like there was something you could have done differently, that maybe if you’d kept quiet or hid better or did something so he didn’t do that to you—”

“What would _you_ know about it?!” he snarled at her.

She had this stoney way of looking at him, this hard undercurrent to her posture and the set of her jaw and the way her eyes pinned him like an ill timed cave in on all sides that made him feel out of step and trapped. She stood straight-backed and even. She slowly lifted her bony hands to her hennin and her wimple and untucked the layered linen from the brown headdress.

Flush on her flesh was dark brown and glossy pink dimpling set high on her neck, like someone had grabbed her throat or maybe her jaw and held tightly until the bruise burned deep into her skin.

She left her neck and jaw bare, the white linen hanging from the other side of the hennin.

“He let me live,” she said after Zuko had stared, gobsmacked, for a long second. “Some of the other girls weren’t so lucky. That’s how I know what happened to you. I may not know the when or the why or what exactly happened to you, but I know one of them grabbed you when you were very young, and burned his _hand_ on your face.”

For a second, Zuko recalled the open palm with a bright orange flame arching towards his cheek and the feeling of his hair being fisted back, to keep him still. He recalled unwrapping the bandages over and over and then realizing too late, after months, because he had never been that smart, that it would scar, and it would scar badly, and no matter what he did, even if he did reclaim his honor, he would bear that on his face for the rest of his life. People would never be able to look him in the eye without seeing _that_ first.

If she wasn’t wearing that linen that he’d been so righteously disgusted by earlier, no one would be able to look at her without having some idea of what happened to her. He had reviled her paltry modest wear as primitive and outdated and sexist and all manner of unkind things, and then… his own countryman… A _civilian_ in a temple, and a _soldier_ of the Dragon Throne. And ‘other girls who weren’t so lucky.’

She swallowed and shifted away from him, twisting alongside the stone faces of the labyrinth as if she hadn’t attacked his very core.

“I—I’m so sorry,” he said, and the words were paltry and useless and small in the face of what had happened to her. He took another ragged breath, words clumsy on his tongue and offered, “He let me live, too. No one said anything, but I think they really thought I wouldn’t, but I think—I think he made sure I probably would.” He swallowed roughly, shook his head, looked away. “I never told Uncle that. I—we really don’t talk about it. We don’t really talk about anything like that. We can’t. _I_ can’t.”

He saw her nod out of the peripheral of his good eye. When he looked at her again, she had fixed her wimple back into place.

“What happened to us,” Eun said, “doesn’t make us weak. We didn’t deserve it. Neither of us. None of us.”

“I did deserve it, though,” Zuko said. “I did.”

Eun shook her head.

“I did,” he insisted. “You don’t know me. You don’t know—I did deserve it.”

“How old are you?”

“Sixteen. Seventeen the end of summer.”

“I got—burned two years ago. I think yours is older than mine,” she offered these facts like misshapen pearls. “Jizi doesn’t know. About me. The other girls—the other soldiers took them, or killed them outright, or if they left them alive, they left the temple or killed themselves. Soon, I was the only one left.”

Zuko stood in the middle of the labyrinth, face to face with her. He offered again, “I’m so sorry.”

Paltry. Worthless. Meaningless. Heartfelt. That really summed him up, didn’t it.

She reached across the cairn in the center, grabbed his hand between her own cold and blue-fingernailed pair, “I’m sorry, too.”

Finally, he said, if it meant anything in the Earth Kingdom, the one curse he remembered from the third act of _The_ _Lament of Altani_ , one of his favorite plays about a mythologized onmitsu dishonored by her commander from back when the islands were all autonomous: “May his eyes be devoured by carrion-eaters and his pyre unlit. May his limbs dissolve and rot where they fall. May his spirit linger, unappeased and without a shrine. May his name be burnt off the tapestries and be discarded like ash.”

Wide-eyed, she let go of his hand. They finished the labyrinthine walking meditation.

That night he convinced Uncle they had to leave. Maybe he was uncomfortable taking comfort from a woman his own men had dishonored and mutilated. Maybe he was uncomfortable living a lie. Maybe he had revealed too much of himself. Regardless, they had to go. Zuko plundered a store of provisions, a third set of clothes for each of them, a bag each, and one of the simpler stone tea sets, and a cracked tile face.

At dawn they reached the mouth of the Zise, and Zuko commandeered a little boat from the dock, ignoring Uncle’s disappointed and disapproving harrumphs and stares.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter specific trigger warnings: ableism and fatphobia (and arguably ageism) from Zuko’s internal commentary; fantastic xenophobia (from Zuko and an OC); mention of off-screen sexual assault of civilian women by soldiers and Zuko’s initial disbelief regarding this; somewhat discussed societal discrimination against war children (i.e. children born because of invaders raping the locals) and rape survivors; discussion of offscreen suicide and murder of off-screen original characters; discussion of mutilation and torture; oblique mention of religious persecution; brief suspicions about Zhao’s creepiness; inedia/anorexia mirabilis/breatharianism of a supporting original character who is visibly emaciated and described (most people with EDs do not “look” like they have an ED, but in this rare instance, Zuko meets someone who does “look” like her diagnostic stereotype and is triggered, disgusted, a little turned on, and intrigued in turn); I have a hard time telling what counts as objectifying or just-experiencing-sexual-attraction, so I'm gonna add a warning here saying Zuko might be objectifying Eun (YMMV); Zuko also may be romanticizing his and Eun's disorders a bit (YMMV); and continued unrealized photosynthesis and some dwelling-on-trauma for Zuko. 
> 
> I have executively decided the Fire Nation, at least, has a ritual calendar and a standard calendar ~~like the Mayans~~. The Hungry Ghost Festival I mention is stolen, a bit, from the irl Hungry Ghost Festival which happens in the ~7th month of the Chinese lunar year. The idols Zuko very briefly describes as hideously ugly (incorrect, you funky little colonizer) are also based off some real life ~~erotic~~ Moche, Nayarit and Jama Coaque ceramics I have worked with. The curse Zuko offers on Eun's assailant is very loosely based off of Roman curse tablets, one of which I very gently handled as a museum intern and helped transcribe. I have adapted some modern Chinese insults (allegedly) from various websites by English speakers, so I have no idea how accurate any of them are or how reasonable or not they sound. I have put Eun in a hennin, even tho I know that is from vaguely-Medieval-Europe and not at all from Asia, so please forgive me. I looked at a lot of East Asian headgear wikipedia pages and almost went with a jobawi or an ayam but nothing really gave the aesthetic that I wanted.
> 
> The first fic rec for this chapter also deals with spirits and Fire Sage!adjacent Zuko: "[Foxfire](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11973705)" by Rahar_Moonfire (on AO3) with a good amount of OCs and world-building that I really appreciate. 
> 
> The second fic rec for this chapter is "[Between the Salt Water and the Sea Strand](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24295465)" by Philosopher_King (on AO3) which is about the week immediately following Zuko's Agni Kai and his wound treatment, especially because of the fourth chapter where Zuko has some Sad Boi Moments about his face that I thought was especially lovely and yoinked a little for this chapter.

**Author's Note:**

> This story has a tentative update schedule every five days until completion and a projected wordcount of ~40k words. I have upped the chapter count from seven to eight. You can also find me on tumblr @fandomtrashcanfire where I sometimes post progress updates, image and research references, and intermittent fanart. 
> 
> Next chapter should be launched as late as Saturday. Apologies for the delay!


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